Bacon cheesecakes

While your oven is busy with cookies and other holiday baking, here’s an appetizer recipe for which you just need your refrigerator, and possibly a sense of humor.

I first made these several years ago when some of my husband’s coworkers were joking about possible potluck offerings. Somehow the concept of a bacon cheesecake came up. Thus challenged, I searched out a recipe. As it happened, there wasn’t a regular Stilton available at my local Kowalski’s that week, so I was pondering a substitute when their cheesemonger strolled by and asked what I needed. After I sheepishly admitted to making bacon cheesecakes, we discussed the relative merits of some blue cheese alternatives. File that under conversations you thought you’d never have.

This recipe isn’t difficult, and it doesn’t take a super long time to make, but it does need to happen in a few stages so you have to make it ahead. And special equipment certainly gives you a leg up. I use a mini cheesecake pan with removable bottoms that help unmold them. I imagine you could try this in a muffin pan, but they’d certainly be more challenging to extract intact.

Bacon Stilton cheesecakes

This recipe is adapted from a Saveur article that adapted Linda Ellerbee’s recipe from “Take Big Bites.” She in turn had adapted it from a recipe given to her by a chef from the George Hotel in Wallingford, England. So by now it’s probably strayed a bit from the original.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter, plus more for greasing pans

1 cup finely crushed cracker crumbs, either graham or Ritz

6 strips of bacon (or 7, if you want to reserve one for garnish)

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

4 ounces Stilton, or a good blue cheese

½ cup ground walnuts or pecans

Method

Grease mini cheesecake pan, if you’ve got one. Or use six 2-inch by 2-inch ring molds well greased. Melt 3 tablespoons butter and add crumbs. Press crumbs firmly into bottom of molds. Since this doesn’t get baked, it’s just the pressure and congealing of the butter fat that will hold this crust together. (If you’ve got a tart tamper, which is just fun to say, much less use, this works perfectly. I know it’s been a good week when I’ve used mine three times in a week.) Chill at least an hour before the next step.

Cook bacon until crisp. Chop in to very small pieces. Mix bacon with cream cheese, Stilton and nuts. Pack into molds on top of crusts. Smooth tops. Chill at least 4 hours or overnight. Run a butter knife around the rim of the molds to loosen the cheesecakes. Slide on to serving plates or platter. Serve at room temperature. Garnish with more bacon if desired.

Makes 12 mini cheesecakes if you’re using a mini cheesecake pan, or 6 cakelets if you’re using 2-inch molds. These are super rich; most people usually split them in a potluck setting.

Garnishing these with a small dollop of Stonewall Kitchen's Bourbon Bacon Jam dresses them up a bit.