Mini Oreo Cheesecakes & Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake

Last Saturday was our early Thanksgiving. We had to celebrate weeks in advance because my son will be born so close to the real holiday. I wanted to make something from scratch using my new kitchen aid mixer. I LOVE that thing. I realize now that I hated baking because I didn't have the wonderful mixer. My sweet older brother gave it to me and top off its perfection, it's red. Matching my kitchen!

So I finally made something from my food board on Pinterest. I pin a lot of things on there that I will never make so this says a lot about how much I wanted to try my mixer. First up was the Oreo Cheesecakes. Here is a direct link to the recipe.

I crumbled extra oreos into the cheesecake mix because let's face it, oreos are delicious. We didn't add the peppermint sprinkles or extract like the blog mentions. It's not in the recipe and it's just an added flavor we didn't want. They were a huge hit with my husband who almost ate all 24 that were baked. The recipe wasn't very high maintenance at all which is right up my alley. Next round I plan to use a double stuff oreo on the bottom.

After cleaning up the bowls, mixer attachments, and measuring cups, my daughter and I moved on to Pumpkin Cheesecake. I had been dying to make this ever since I had a slice at Olive Garden. Theirs is better but ours still came out delicious. You can see proof from what the bowl looked like when we were done.

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com. The website is awesome and the phone app is pretty amazing too. We followed this recipe exactly and it was delicious. I still love a regular pumpkin pie, but this cheesecake version is just so light and creamy.

Watch out! Now that I have a mixer I plan to bake more. I’m going to ditch the box mixes!