It’s that time of year again. The one time each year when I make some sort of peppermint treat for all my mint-loving friends. This year I was trying to choose how best to incorporate some form of mint into our holiday party spread and the idea of a mini cheesecake struck me. After all, the peanut butter version I made a couple of years ago was a huge hit. Just as expected, these went over well with everyone but me. (And Andrew, come to think of it. He may have inherited my tastebuds.) These are a quick and easy festive treat is sure to please all the mint-lovers in your life. And me, I’ll just admire them for their good looks.
Ingredients
For the crust:
1 cup chocolate cookie crumbs (I use Oreos)*
2 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp. sugar
For the cheesecake:
12 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
½ cup sour cream
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp. peppermint extract
Pinch of salt
Pink food coloring (optional)
25 white chocolate candy cane kisses, chopped
For the topping:
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
½ cup heavy cream
1 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
Coarsely crushed candy canes, for garnish
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Lightly spray a 24-well silicone mini muffin pan with cooking spray. (If using a non-flexible pan, line with mini cupcake liners.) To make the crust, combine the chocolate cookie crumbs, melted butter and sugar in a small bowl. Mix with a fork until evenly blended. Divide the crust mixture between the wells of the prepared pan, about 2-3 teaspoons in each. Press the crumb mixture into a flat layer on the bottom of the well. (The bottom of a shot glass or flat utensil is great for this. I use the flat bottom of my whisk handle.) Bake for 10 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack.
Reduce the oven temperature to 300˚ F. To prepare the filling, combine the cream cheese and sour cream in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat on medium-high speed until smooth and well blended. Add in the sugar and mix until incorporated, about 1 minute more, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Blend in the egg, peppermint extract and salt. If desired, tint the batter light pink with food coloring. Continue to beat until the mixture is completely smooth. Fold in the candy cane kisses with a spatula.
Divide the mixture evenly over the cookie crumb crusts and smooth the tops slightly. Bake just until set, about 22 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan to room temperature. Once completely cool, transfer the pan to the refrigerator and chill thoroughly before removing the cheesecakes, at least 3 hours.
Once the cheesecakes are well chilled, carefully remove them from the pan. To make the ganache, place the chopped chocolate in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a simmer over medium heat. Once simmering, remove from the heat and immediately pour over the chocolate. Let stand 1-2 minutes. Whisk in small circular motions until a smooth ganache has formed. Whisk in the butter until completely incorporated. Let the mixture stand at room temperature until slightly thickened for piping onto the cheesecakes. (Speed this process in the refrigerator or freezer, but be sure to whisk every 10 minutes or so.) Once the ganache has thickened, transfer to a pastry bag fitted with a decorative tip and pipe onto the cheesecakes. Sprinkle with crushed candy canes. Refrigerate until the ganache is set.
*If using Oreos, it's not necessary to remove the filling before grinding in the food processor.
This sort of end of the year rush time is just crazy, right? Day to day life is always busy, but this time of year there are so many additional things added onto the load. Even when they are fun things like social events, holiday baking, gifting, sending cards, it can all combine to be quite overwhelming. My best advice – don’t let that happen. Or even if it does, make sure to carve out some quiet time to spend with your loved ones. Unplug. Unwind. Just be together. Let all of the hectic holiday buzz slip away and relax, at least for a few hours. And while you are at it, have a big bowl of comfort food.
For me, this chicken pot pie instantly evokes that sort of homemade-with-love feeling that the best comfort foods bring (even if I am the one who made it). The first time I ever tried this was 
Since discovering my love for decorating sugar cookies, the idea of a tree with cookie ornaments has been lying in wait in the back of my mind. It seemed like such a great idea…but then I thought about it, and over thought it and started to worry that it would never work. What if the cookies were to fragile and broke? What if I couldn’t find the right apparatus to hold them? Finally I decided enough worrying, just do it already! So, I went for it and you know what? It was really easy.
Want to make your own cookie tree? Here’s how I did it:
Every year one of the highlights of the holiday season for me is hosting our annual holiday party. I love getting to see so many of our friends and loved ones from all the different areas of our lives together in one place, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. We feel so very blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.
This year I opted for a light blue, silver and white color scheme and I loved the way it looked when all was said and done. The whole thing had a kind of airy, whimsical feel. The gorgeous party printables from the lovely ladies at 
Definitely one of the biggest hits of the whole night was the hot cocoa bar. People just loved this. We put our under-used fondue set to work keeping the cocoa warm, with the accompanying bowls holding assorted garnishes. (We also had bottles of Kahlua and Bailey’s on the table for an adult variation – quite a popular choice!) This was such a huge hit, I think we’ll be doing it for years to come.
If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I recently tried a new (to me) macaron method, and I am a total convert. For the party I made two varieties of macarons and they were far, far better than anything I’ve made before (…and I really loved the ones I had made before!) I’ll do a tutorial about this soon. As a side note, always keep an open mind when choosing your serving dishes for a party. I repurposed these hurricane candle holders for the party and they were the perfect way to display so many macarons.
My schedule has been very hectic lately so I had to throw this together with a little less planning than normal, but in the end we were really happy with how everything came together. Having done it so many years in a row, it gets easier every time since there are some staple crowd favorites that must be included. I opted for very low maintenance dishes to fill in the gaps and it made for an elegant but fairly stress-free event. The best kind! Our full menu is below. I’ll be sharing some of these recipes over the next couple of weeks. There are a few you will not want to miss!
1. At the very beginning of the month, Ben and I traveled to Las Vegas, NV where I presented a poster at a medical conference. We didn’t know what to expect, but Vegas was more fun than we thought it would be. (More on this later!)
