Kitchen Witch Sundays - Cheesecake Bites with Homemade Salted Caramel Sauce

The chocolate cravings have been high this week, and there's nothing better than a mix of all my favorite sweet things so I thought I'd give this recipe from my grandmother's recipes a try. With a modern twist and some flavor customization, of course!

You'll need the following;

• Oreos
• 16 oz cream cheese at room temp
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup mini chocolate chips
• Homemade salted caramel sauce

And of course, here's where making things in a custom flavor profile comes in. Any kind of Oreos will work, I chose red velvet because those are all kinds of yum. Same goes for the yogurt; Greek or regular style will do, this particular brand just happens to come in a honey salted caramel flavor I find absolutely divine and I knew would add to the flavor of the recipe as a whole. And of course your chocolate chips can be regular, dark, white, butterscotch, whatever you like. Heck I'm even betting flavored cream cheese would be great in this, we just happened to have regular on hand but there's a honey pecan I like that would have probably done well with this flavor combination.

There's fruit/berry flavored cream cheeses and yogurts that would be great with chocolate Oreos and white chocolate chips, for example. Great stuff to experiment with and see what flavor combinations you like, but tasting these in the aftermath led to perfection so I'm happy with the way these came out :)

Also I had my salted caramel sauce made in advance. The linked recipe is 100% identical to the one I already use and super easy with just 4 ingredients (sugar, butter, heavy cream and salt) so keep that in mind for this recipe as well.

First thing's first, as always with baked goods - preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Then get out your muffin tin and put in some cupcake liners, then put an Oreo in the bottom of each one.

Make the cheesecake filling. Start with the cream cheese, granulated sugar and yogurt and mix them until they're well combined. Add in the eggs and vanilla extract and mix until smooth, then do one last round with the chocolate chips to get them well mixed in.

Fill each piece of your cupcake tin literally to the brim, you should have very little if any leftover after making a dozen of these. Be sure to give it a minute to settle around the Oreo and jiggle the pan a bit to help this process along if need be.

Once they're full and your oven is preheated, pop them in the oven for 25 minutes.

Once they come out of the oven they'll be a little puffed up and the centers might be a bit jiggly but that's okay.

Cool the pan for at least an hour at room temperature, then at least 2 hours in the fridge before serving. Trust me, trying to get these things out when they are warm will lead to them absolutely falling apart and getting a goopy mess everywhere, my roommate tried to eat one while they were sitting on the counter to cool and learned that the hard way because I forgot to tell him they weren't ready >.>

If you haven't already made your salted caramel sauce this might be a good time to do so because you've got at least 3 hours to kill and that gives you plenty of time to spend 15 minutes making the sauce and for it to cool along with the cheesecake bites.

By the time they're done cooling the bites will have collapsed a little bit, but that's okay because.....

It makes a perfect place to put some caramel sauce! Now I will admit these little delights are absolutely fab on their own, but the salted caramel sauce just adds that extra something that really makes them special! My roommate and I have already eaten through almost half of them, and I'm betting they'll be gone by Tuesday XD

Banner was made by me in Photoshop. All other pictures here were taken by me specifically for this post. I have been a home cook for over a decade, and any questions or comments about this recipe are encouraged!