Mini Berry Cheesecakes

I made these Mini Berry Cheesecakes for our High Tea Picnic Party.  They are actually something I have wanted to make since we began our blog but I was put off as they look tricky.  Truth be told, they weren’t as fiddly as I feared and I was able to make them the night before too, which meant I wasn’t rushing around on the day.  Win!

1 cup ground up biscuits (about 10 – I used gingersnaps)
40g butter, melted
½ cup frozen raspberries, thawed
2 tablespoons icing sugar, sifted
375g cream cheese
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
1 teaspoons vanilla essence
12 – 24 fresh raspberries, to serve

Preheat your oven to 165°C.  Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper or foil cases.
Mix the biscuit crumbs with the melted butter in a bowl.  Divide the mixture among the muffin cases, pressing down firmly.  Bake for 5 minutes, then remove from the oven and cool. 
To make the raspberry purée, mash the raspberries to a pulp with the back of a fork, then strain through a sieve into a bowl, keeping as much juice as possible.  Discard the seeds.  Stir the icing sugar into the raspberry juice.
Place the cream cheese and caster sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until the mixture is smooth, light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating until combined after each addition.  Finally add in the lemon rind and vanilla essence and mix to combine.
Pour the cream cheese mixture over the biscuit bases, filling right to the top of the cases.  Place small drops (about ½ teaspoon) of raspberry purée on the top of the cakes.  Using  a skewer, carefully swirl the purée through the cheese mixture.  Bake the cakes for approximately 15 minutes or until set.  Switch off the oven and leave the cakes in it to cool completely (they will shrink a bit).
Once the cakes are cool, top with fresh raspberries and dust with icing sugar before serving.

Mini Mince and Cheese Pies

For our High Tea Picnic we each decided to bring something sweet and something savoury.  For my savoury option I had a go at making little mince and cheese pies.  There were a lot easier than I thought they would be too!  These pies are a great idea for a picnic, something different for lunch or individual dinners.  I made 10 mini pies for our picnic and used up the remaining mince mixture by making larger pies for dinner using some ramekins (see picture below).  For my smaller pies, I used some cute little tins, but I have written the recipe below so that you can make them just using a muffin tin.  If you want to make your pies so they stand on their own out of the tins for a while, you may want to change the pastry base to a shortcrust pastry and pre-bake it before putting the filling in, or you could make some pastry from the recipe I used to make Pork Pies out of.  I would still top them with puff pastry to give them a nice flaky pastry lid.

Makes at least 20 small savoury pies, or 8 ramekin sized pies.

Ingredients:
500g mince
½ onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely grated
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon dried mixed herbs
2 cups beef stock
4 tablespoons tomato sauce
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
5 – 7 sheets puff pastry
Colby cheese, thinly sliced (enough to cover the top of each pie)
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk

Method:
In a frying pan over medium heat, cook the onion and garlic until the onion is translucent.  Add the mince and carrot, frying until the mince is browned.
Add the Worcestershire sauce, flour, mixed herbs, stock, tomato sauce and salt and pepper, and stir through the mince.  Reduce the frying pan to a low heat and cook the mince mixture, simmering, for 15 to 20 minutes.  Remove the mince from the frying pan and leave to cool (you can refrigerate it if you want).
Preheat the oven to 200°C. 
Grease 20 muffin tin holes (or 8 cup-sized ramekins) with butter and line each with pastry. Cut  circles out of the pastry, big enough to cover each pie.
Spoon the mince mixture into each pie case and top with slices of cheese.  Add the pie tops over each pie and sea around the edges using a fork.  Whisk the egg and milk together and brush over each pie top.  Using a knife, pierce a hole into the top of each pie.
Bake for 25 minutes or until the top is golden.  Leave to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

High Tea Picnic Party

Happy New Year everyone! At the end of 2012 we got together and created this gorgeous high tea picnic. We’ve put together a couple of high teas before and they have been lovely, this one definitely takes the cake though! We had beautiful sunny weather, an amazing set up, so much amazing food and we got to meet and share it all with the lovely Lydia of Lydia Bakes. Lydia made some gorgeous cupcakes (that she will be sharing with you in a guest post very soon) and lots and lots of sandwiches. Melissa hosted us all at her house and made some too cute little mince pies, some feta and spinach pinwheels and delicious individual raspberry swirl cheesecakes, she had also whipped up some of these orange drop cookies. I made a raspberry and lemon cake with cream cheese frosting (which even if I do say so myself is delicious) and some apple and pork sausage rolls. 

We need to say a couple of thank you’s to the people who provided us with things that helped the whole event come together the way it did; The Vintage Table for supplying us with all the gorgeous vintage serve wear, the table cloth, tea tins and that sweet picnic basket, The Pretty Baker for providing us with the gorgeous pink and white honey comb balls and the bakers twine, and Karyn of Milly Made It who lent us the beautiful quilt.

We’ll be sharing all our new recipes with you over the next month. Just putting this post together made me hungry and has made me craving home made sausage rolls. We hope you all had an enjoyable Christmas and New Year, we are looking forward to sharing lots of new and delicious recipes with you this year.