Have you ever had a recipe just not work out the way it’s supposed to? It happens to me all the time. I usually tend to mess up a recipe so badly that I don’t even post it on here. But every now and then, my odd mistake ends up not being so bad, and is, dare is say it, quite delicious. This is one of those times, so I decided to share it. This recipe is adapted from verybestbaking.com.
Ingredients:
2/3 cup (~15) crushed gingersnap cookies
2 tablespoons butter, melted
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 can pumpkin puree
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 tablespoons dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line a muffin tin with cupcake liners. (I tried both paper and foil cupcake liners. Use foil, the paper ones got stuck and I couldn’t get the tarts out!)
Crumble the gingersnaps. Place them in a ziploc bag and roll with a rolling pin until finely crushed.
Combine the cookie crumbs and butter in a small bowl.
Evenly distribute into each muffin tin (about 1 tablespoon per muffin tin) and press into the bottom to create a crust. Bake the muffin cups for 5 minutes.
Beat the cream cheese, pumpkin, sugar, spices, and vanilla extract until blended.
This is where things went south. My cream cheese was not having this whole “blended” thing. I think it still might have been too cold so it kind of chunked off into the mixture. Blargh.
Add eggs and beat well.
Nope, still chunky.
Pour the mixture into the muffin cups, filling about 3/4 of the way full.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, remove, and allow to cool in a pan on a wire rack.
Refrigerate the tarts for 10 minutes. You can prepare the chocolate drizzle at this point. Add the chocolate chips to a heavy duty ziploc bag. Microwave on high in 10 second intervals, taking the bag out and kneading to see if the chips have melted. (I think mine took 3 10 second intervals).
Cut a super tiny corner from the bag.
Squeeze over the tarts to drizzle with chocolatey goodness.
So. They probably aren’t as pretty as they were supposed to be. And I was pretty bummed about the chunks of cream cheese. Sigh.
But one bite, and I was over it. They were delicious! It kind of ended up being like a mini pumpkin pie with bursts of cheesecake. So you can judge how funny they look all day, but I’ll just keep on snacking on my funny looking tarts. 🙂
Terry says
Tip, if you beat your cream cheese first at room temperature alone, it will blend smooth. Then add wet ingredents next a little at a time.
Kaitlin says
oh! That’s so good to know, thanks Terry!
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