Who doesn’t like a little raspberry cheesecake? When they are small like this, you can have two and feel good about your decisions! Using Pappy’s Pre-made Pie Crust Dough makes this recipe a breeze to mix, bake and eat!
When your backyard garden is bursting with raspberries, blackberries or blueberries, it’s time for a recipe like this. Break from the graham cracker tradition and use Pappy’s Pie Dough for this creamy, rich cheesecake with fresh fruit toppings. You can adapt this recipe to a larger tart, but we loved these little tartlettes to serve our friends on the patio, along with pink lemonade spiked with blueberries with mint on a warm August day!
For more dessert recipes, check out the Desserts Recipe Page!
INGREDIENTS
1 pod Pappy's Frozen Pie Dough Thawed but still chilled
8 ounces fresh raspberries or blueberries, blackberries
8 ounces cream cheese softened or at room temperature
1 tablespoon heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 pinch salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Rinse your berries and set the most beautiful, intact ones aside. Ensure your pod of Pappy's pie dough is thawed.
2. Flour the counter surface lightly and roll out the Pappy's Pie Crust Dough to a thin sheet of dough - between 1/8" and 1/16". While we used small cupcake tins for our tartlettes, you may use individual pie tins, or even a square tart pan with a removable bottom.
3. Measure your tart tins and use a round biscuit cutter or drinking glass approximately 2 times the diameter of the tart opening. Cut out circles for each tart.
4. Gently lift the dough round from the counter and place into tin. You may want to fold it in half to make it easier to fit the tin. lightly spread the dough and press in place.
5. Once each round is in place, prick the bottom and sides of the crust dough in each tart tin - this discourages the crust from puffing too much to place filling in it. Place in oven on center rack and bake for 20 minutes.
6. While the tart shells bake, make the cheese cake filling. With a hand mixer, beat the cream cheese in a large bowl until creamy and completely smooth. Add in sugar, salt, vanilla, heavy cream and beat, again until smooth. Finally add the egg and finish the mixing - just until the cheesecake filling is combined, creamy and smooth.
7. Once the tartlette shells have completed their pre-bake, remove them from the oven and reduce the temperature to 325 Degrees. Spoon the cheesecake filling into each warm tartlette shell. Upon baking, the filling may puff up a bit, add filling to your preffered level in each shell. Our tartlette shells are small, so we used a large teaspoon full!
8. After you've filled each shell, place the tin back in the oven and back for 15-20 minutes, or until the filling has set up. This will vary on your tart size - smaller tarts like ours only took 15 minutes, larger ones may take more than 20 minutes. Remove from the oven when the filling has set.
9. Cool on a wire rack until the tarts reach room temp. When cool, remove from tin and place on serving platter and place in fridge to completely chill.
10. Before serving, top with the most beautiful raspberries in the lot and dust with powder sugar or granulated sugar.
Serve chilled. Store in the refrigerator (if there are any left)! RECIPE NOTES
Pre-baking the tart crust is suggested to make sure the crust stays crisp when you add the filling. Also - we recommend that you use Nielsen-Massey's Vanilla Extract - it's the best we can find and adds decadence to this dish - you can order it from Amazon!