Mini Thin Mint Cheesecake Cups

Wow. These little cups from The Picky Palate were fabulous.

I wanted something to make for Mother's Day and, as usual, went searching through my starred posts on Google Reader. These little guys seemed perfect - different, easy, and good.

I was surprised, actually, at exactly HOW easy they actually were. Maybe they just LOOK decadent...? Well, whatever, they were easy.

They also tasted great. In fact, Pat emailed me a little while ago and told me to take it easy tonight and that we'd just have leftovers for dinner. He also said that if we don't have enough leftovers, he'd be more than happy to eat the remaining few "little cheesecake things" for dinner.

Ingredients:

• 13 Thin Mint Cookies, ground in food processor or blender (you can also use the mint Oreos)
• 2 Tablespoons melted butter
• 8 oz softened cream cheese
• 1/2 Cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 1/2 Tablespoons buttermilk
• 5 Thin mint cookies coarsely crumbled
• 1/4 Cup chocolate chips
• 2-3 Tablespoons heavy cream
• 3-5 Thin mint cookies, crumbled (for top of cups) (I also topped the cups with chopped white and milk chocolate chips.)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Combine ground cookies and butter in a medium bowl. Drop about 1 Tablespoon of cookie mixture into 24 mini cupcake tins that has been sprayed with cooking spray. (If you have mini cupcake paper wrappers I'd use them, it was difficult to remove my cheesecake cups from the tin itself). Press crust into cups with back of a spoon.2. In an electric or stand mixer cream the cream cheese and sugar until well combined. Add egg and buttermilk until well combined as well. Stir in crumbled cookies. Pour cheesecake mixture into cupcake tins filled almost to the very top. Bake for 25-28 minutes or until cooked through. Remove and cool for 15 minutes. Melt chocolate chips in microwave until melted and smooth. Stir in heavy cream until smooth and shiny. Spoon about 1 Tablespoon over each cheesecake cup and sprinkle with additional crumbled cookies.