Cheese Cake In All Shapes & Sizes for Shavous!

For those of you who who aren't familiar with Shavuos, it is the holiday in which we eat dairy foods, and especially cheesecake! In our family, we have a dairy breakfast with cheesecake and other treats on the morning of Shavuos and a meat meal in the afternoon, since my husband isn't really a dairy person. Other families eat only dairy meals on the holiday, but almost everyone eats cheesecake, because it's synonymous with Shavuos! Why? Well there's a reason! After the Jews accepted the Torah on Mount Sinai they had to slaughter their animals according to the Jewish Law— since the laws were new to them, they ate dairy foods until they caught up to speed. One of the other reasons is that the Torah is likened to milk and honey, sweet and nourishing!

I haven't tried this recipe myself, it's a loaner from my friends over at gourmetkoshercooking.com but it sure is a simple recipe with great looking results! Due to the ingredients this recipe will probably only be suitable for those in the US, as I have no idea if there's such a thing in Israel as sweetened condensed milk, and cream cheese isn't readily available. Not to worry, there are plenty of great recipes for us too! (I'm going to try and find some.)

Mini Cheesecakes

• 12 round shortbread cookies (like Walker’s)
• ½ cup strawberry, raspberry, blueberry or blackberry jam
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• ½ cup sweetened condensed milk
• 2 eggs
• Fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries or blackberries for garnish (depends on the kind of jam you chose)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners
and put cookies in bottom. Cover each cookie with 1 teaspoon jam.
Beat together, cream cheese, condensed milk and eggs until smooth. Pour
batter into muffin cups. Bake for about 20 minutes – until set. Cool on
wire rack. Refrigerate at least 1 hour.

Remove mini cheesecakes from muffin tin. Glaze each cheesecake with
remaining jam (slightly warmed so it will spread thinly). Top with a
fresh berry, if desired.

Lemony Almost Fat Free Cheesecake:

You can find the recipe from my friends at gourmetkosher cooking.com here the fat in the recipe comes from using butter in the crust, so you may want to do some of your research and find a fat-free crust as well if that is important for you.