"...cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music." - Julia Childs

I obviously love creating music and am much more confident at it than I am at cooking, but lately I've really enjoyed spontaneously trying new recipes and making up my own too! It's a bit like making music - you try putting new ingredients together and eagerly await the final result. Often it can be a pleasant surprise what you come up with!

Anyway here's something I made the other day. Night actually. In fact, I decided at 10:30pm that I wanted to make cheesecake. Don't ask me why - I just did. At about midnight the cheesecake was ready and it turned out to be a light and fun dessert! And here's the amusing bit...I found the recipe on the back of a pack of cereal. But I did modify the recipe quite a bit along the way, so here goes (and apologies in advance for the unamazing photo! Hehe...)

Mini Ricotta Cheesecakes with Strawberries

To make the base:

1 crushed up packet of Nice biscuits (any biscuits will do but I like Nice biscuits because they're coated in sugar, making the base nice and sweet!)

Melted butter (sorry I'm really bad with amounts...just enough to moisten the crushed biscuit and help it stick together slightly. Just stir in the butter bit by bit until it's enough.)

Cheesecake filling:

300g of fresh ricotta cheese

250g (a pack) of cream cheese

2 egg yolks

1/2 cup of caster sugar

Juice of half a lemon

Sliced strawberries

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius

2. Grease a 12 cup muffin pan (my muffin pan had gone rusty so I lined each cup with foil. It was quite helpful in the end because I could lift the cheesecakes out easily by picking up the foil. Don't know if this is helpful or not?)

3. Mix the crushed biscuits and melted butter together and press evenly into the bottom of the muffin pan

4. Bake for 10 mins until slightly golden and firm

5.  Whisk together the ricotta, cream cheese, yolks, sugar and lemon until creamy.

6. Places a few slices of strawberry on top of each base and then cover on top the cheesecake mixture (the cups will be nice and full!)

7. Bake in the oven for about 45 minutes

8. Remove and chill (or you can eat it hot like my dad does...but I much prefer chilled cheesecake)

9. Serve with cream and/or icecream!

Enjoy!

Love Lissa