Munchie Monday- Cheesecake Minis

Thursday is my amazing boyfriends 20th birthday and he LOVE cheesecake! I am making these cheesecake in cupcake tins for a special dessert for his birthday. 

For the crust:

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

2 Tablespoon sugar

3 Tablespoon butter

For the filling:

3 (8-oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened

¾ cup sugar

1 Teaspoon vanilla

3 Eggs

For the topping:

1 cup whipping cream

Strawberry preserves

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 325°F (162°C)

2. Melt butter in a sauce pan. Mix graham cracker crumbs 2 Tbsp sugar and melted butter together: press in the bottoms of 18 lined cupcake tins.

3. Beat cream cheese, sugar  and vanilla until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition.

4. Spoon filling in each cup. Bake 25 minutes or until enters are almost set. Let cool and refrigerate 2 hours.

5. Beat whipping cream until stiff peaks form spoon on top of cheesecake. I topped about half this way then I add a spoonful or two of the strawberry preserves and beat again till blended and topped on a few more cheesecakes.

Theses taste so good! They are nice and moist. I love them!

Excuse my horrible stove in the background :)

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Garden Tuesday- Welcome to my garden!

Hi everyone and welcome to Garden Tuesday! My garden is a cinder block raised bed garden with a mixture of sandy loam topsoil and mushroom compost. I really like this soil because it holds the moister in and i can go longer between watering's. The plants seem to be doing excellent in this type of soil and growing crazy! It seems like I am out there pruning the plants every 3-4 days LOL!

 I have six tomato plants in this years garden. Two of them are Black Cherry tomatoes that I got from a local green house. They aren't really black they're more of a purplish reddish color. I haven't gotten any of them off them plants yet although i did last year and they were amazing. I also have two plants I started from seeds called Large Red Tomato...I'm not kidding that's what they are called. I got them from here at Heirloom Gardner. The last pair are just beefsteak tomatoes that I also got from the same local green house. 

Jalapenos almost ready to pick.

I also have like 10 jalapeno plants and six poblano pepper plants that I got from the green house. The jalapenos are doing really well I've already gotten a bunch of peppers off of the plants. The poblanos are doing well it takes them longer to produce peppers then the jalapenos, so I'm just now getting  peppers on the plants. 

Some people would advise you not to plant anything that's spicy near tomatoes, mint, watermelon or anything else like that because they will have a spicy taste. I have never had ANY issue with this happening but never say never. You can try it one year and if you get other things that become spicy just arrange things differently next year.

Tomaillo jungle of the right lol.

I have only two banana pepper plants that I also got from the green house. They are doing really well last week I got like 10 peppers of each of the plants and I wish I took a picture of the plants covered in them. In the holes of the cinder blocks in front of the banana peppers I have one basil plant, one strawberry plant, and a chocolate mint. The basil is HUGE and it just bloomed so it has these pretty white flowers on it. I've cut a few leaves from the basil and used them in spaghetti and chicken parmesan and, it gives them a extra amazing taste!I've gotten a handful of strawberries of my plant. I did have like three other plants but they randomly died over a two week period and I have no clue why. If any of y'all have a possible reason why let me know because I love strawberries and I want to plant more but I don't want them to all die.

Top left is Banana pepper, top right is Chocolate Mint and bottom is Basil.

Now on to favorite plant this year...the chocolate mint! This is probably my favorite mint I have ever grown. It was a faint smell and taste of chocolate but it's a sweet mint and I add a sprig or two to my pitcher of ice tea and it adds a little bit of sweetness but not a whole lot. It still tastes really really good!

The last type of plants I have are six tomatillos. If you aren't to familiar with them I know that they are used in some sauces and salsas used in Mexican cooking other than that I don't know what they are used for. Tomatillos are a cousin of tomatoes and are grown the same way (which I didn't know till a few weeks ago :/ oops). That's why they look like a baby jungle lol because I didn't use tomato cages to grow them in. Also they are suppose to be grown 3ft apart which i planted them like maybe a foot apart oops, but I learned for my mistake and they will be done differently next year.

Left are tomaillo and right are jalapenos

I'm also going to include a little tip for any of y'all to use.

• Get a lot of tomato cages. They come in handy for tomatoes, tomaillos, heck you can probably grow cucumbers and beans on them.