Mini Trick or Treat No Bake Lemon Cheesecakes for Halloween Party

 

Party food for Halloween parties is pretty easy, I think - as well as all the usual suspects (sausage rolls, sandwiches or mini burgers or quiche or whatever) and then any kind of 'scary stuff'. Here's an idea that's hopefully a little bit different.

I wanted to make something a bit different for Halloween but wasn’t quite sure what. I was in Iceland picking up a few groceries and saw these on the Halloween display: a pack of six mini plastic pumpkins, which you can fill with treats (or tricks!) and use as a game, a bit like an Easter egg hunt perhaps. They were only £1 so I bought them. I had a better use for them though – use them to serve desserts!

 

 

Of course these are plastic and can’t go in the oven but my mind went straight away to no-bake mini cheesecakes. When I got home I devised the following recipe.

I made, and served, each mini cheesecake inside the pumpkins – I went with a lemon flavour with a ginger biscuit base, but you could always do pumpkin flavour cheesecake or anything you like. I wanted to make one of the six a ‘trick’ rather than ‘treat’ and thought about putting a small plastic spider inside to surprise the recipient – but didn’t think that would go down too well with my husband!

 

Instead I decided to colour one of the cheesecake toppings green with food colouring. You could easily do that to all of them for a children’s Halloween party, but I thought it would be a nice touch when I served the mini cheesecakes in the closed pumpkins, if everyone chose their own and when one person opened theirs, they got a bit of a surprise!

Here’s the recipe I came up with

Mini no bake Halloween lemon and ginger cheesecakes - an original recipe by Caroline Cowe @Caroline Makes

 

 

Makes six mini cheesecakes

You can also make these mini cheesecakes in paper cupcake cases, or ramekins, or anything you think will work!

6 McVitie’s ginger biscuits

2 level tbsp. butter or marg, melted
175g cream cheese
60ml double cream
50g caster sugar
Juice of ½ lemon (or more to taste)
Couple of drops of green food colouring if desired

Crush the biscuits either in a food processor or with the back of a wooden spoon. Melt the butter either in a small pan over a low heat or in the microwave and stir in the crushed biscuits.

Divide between the cheesecake cases and press the biscuit mixture down using the back of a teaspoon.

In a separate bowl, beat the cheese, cream, sugar and lemon. If you want to colour all the cheesecakes, add the food colouring now.

 
Divide the cheesecake mixture between the cases. If you are only making one green, reserve a little of the cheesecake mixture in the bowl, add the food colouring then fill the final cheesecake.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

 

 

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Kat the Baking Explorer and also with Cook Blog Share.