Mini Cheesecakes

When my son craves a special food, he doesn't stop asking for it until I make it.
Last week I decided not to cook for an entire week, but to defrost all those leftovers in my freezer in order to make space for new dishes, a spring clean up sort of. It was a hard week! All those recipes piled up that I still didn't get to cook. New cookbooks close to my bed with so many fantastic recepis only waiting to be tested. So my son started to stick little post it notes everywhere in the house, saying" Mini-Cheescakes"  Just to make sure, he sets the alarm on my cell phone and when it rang there were also the words "Mini-Cheesecakes" coming up. Finally I gave in (that's what I usually do) and made him his little treat.

Mini Cheesecakes
(Nigella Lawson "How to be a Domestic Goddess")
makes 24

scant 1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup pus 2 tablespoons or 9 oz graham crackers
7 oz cream cheese
2 tablespoons sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons lemon juice

2 12-cup mini-muffin pans

Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Melt the butter in a pan or microwave. Put the graham crackers, broken up roughly, in the processor, and blitz. Still processing, add the melted butter down the funnel and turn the wet sand onto a plate or into a bowl. Put a heaped teaspoonful of the biscuit base into each mini-muffin cup, press it around the edges and up the sided of the cup with your fingers,  and let it harden in the refrigerator.

Beat the cream cheese until it's smooth, and then add the sugar (You can do all this in the washed-out processor bowl). Add the egg, beating well, and then the sour cream, vanilla, and lemon juice, combining everything until it's smooth and creamy.

Put the cream-cheese mixture into a measuring cup and pour some into each mini-muffin cup, leaving the top of the crust still visible. Put in the oven and cook for about 10 minutes, by which time the cheese mixture should have set.

Let them cool and then put them in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours before gently easing them out of the pans. Or, if you like me and lose patience, after some cautious prising with a rubber spatula turn the pans upside-down and rap firmly, and the little cheesecakes fall out unharmed.