Triple Chocolate Cheesecake Cups

I changed my mind 3 different times on what I wanted Alec to make me for my birthday dessert.  At first I really wanted pineapple upside down cake but my family convinced me I'd be the only one eating it.  Then I saw a delicious recipe for a raspberry poke cake with cheesecake icing and thought that sounded pretty good.

When he went to make the Raspberry Cheesecake bites for the 4th of July I saw a mouthwatering chocolate cheesecake cupcake recipe that I just KNEW I'd love so that's what we finally settled on... with a few minor changes to the recipe.

We found these dark chocolate Oreos and I just had to have them!

Ingredients:
12 Dark Chocolate Oreo Cookies
8 ounces semi sweet Baker's chocolate (divided)
2 8 ounce packages cream cheese
2/3 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup cool whip; thawed
1 Tablespoon powdered sugar
6 strawberries

First we lined our muffin/ cupcake tin with liners.  Then twisting the top off 12 Oreo cookies we set the side with the filling into the bottom of each liner-- saving the tops to use as a garnish later.

We melted 6 ounces of the Baker's chocolate in a small glass bowl-- breaking the bar into smaller pieces and using the microwave.  We have a melt button on ours where we can specify chocolate and how much we're melting but the original recipe we were following recommends High for 2 minutes.

In the stand mixer we combined softened cream cheese, sugar, & vanilla.

Then we added in the chocolate and the eggs; one at a time using a low speed and only mixing until just blended.

Using our cupcake scoop we put one scoop over each Oreo 1/2 on our tray and baked at 350 for 23- 26 minutes (I think we removed them at 25).

Once mostly set we took them out of the oven to cool completely.  A few of ours cracked but we knew were putting ganache & strawberries on them so we didn't worry about that. Since we weren't serving them until the following night we put our cupcakes into the fridge after they had cooled to room temperature.

Hot from the oven they were quite puffy

They did deflate as they cooled off; like most cheesecakes do

The next morning we melted the remaining 2 ounces of Baker's chocolate using the microwave and then added Cool Whip to the melted chocolate.  We had never made ganache this way and I was skeptical about how well it would work and what it would taste like. We ended up adding 1 Tablespoon of powdered sugar and microwaving it for just a few seconds.  Alec also sprinkled in some Oreo cookie crumbs before he had a topping he was happy with.

Once we had our ganache all set we put a small scoop of ganache onto each cupcake and topped them with a strawberry half (leaving one or two without since we have a few family members that don't like strawberries).

Just look at all those layers of luscious chocolate!

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