Cheesecake Wontons

There are some foodstuffs I am loath to buy—puff pastry, for example, or canned biscuits. While I admit to rather liking the taste of these foods and do appreciate their convenience, I just can't quite bring myself to buy and cook with them when I know I can make them with ye olde flour and butter on the kitchen shelves. But my repertoire has its limits; there are some base doughs and pastries I have yet to master. Phyllo dough is one of these things (I attempted it once, to a lengthy and disappointing disaster). And so are wontons. So when I saw a package of wonton wrappers in the grocery store, I was irresistibly drawn to them. At the time I didn't know what to fill them with; I only knew I needed them to be mine. And a few days later, per the announcement of an upcoming family dinner, I was spurred to form a plan for them: wrap the dough around cheesecake filling, to make bite-sized pockets of dessert.

I began with a simple cheesecake recipe, mostly cream cheese and sugar, adding just a bit of almond extract. (I left eggs out of the recipe because I didn't want the filling to rise too much and burst out of the pastry. Unfortunately, some of the wontons fell victim to this anyway; I believe I filled them too generously). But then it occurred to me: what is particularly nice about these mini cheesecakes, despite their cutesy size, is that since each is individually made, you can vary the flavours in one round of baking. So I just separated the filling into a few bowls and added some ingredients to create different types of cheesecake filling. We had classic, white chocolate, cherry and peanut butter.

Clockwise from pink filling: Cherry jam,
peanut butter and white chocolate chip

I also sprinkled a bit of cinnamon-sugar on the tops of the half-moon pastries, to make a crunchy, sugary glaze. Here, too, there's room for variety. You could experiment with different spices, maybe colored sanding sugar. It's a nice compliment to the rich, smooth filling.

And then I made an espresso-caramel sauce for dipping or drizzling. The sauce was actually my favorite part of the dish, and would taste quite wonderful, I'm guessing, on ice cream or other desserts.

Cheesecake Wontons

Ingredients for filling:

2 8-oz blocks of cream cheese, room temperature (I used Neufchâtel)
1 TBSP unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
3/4 cup plus 3 TBSP granulated sugar, divided
pinch of salt
1 tsp almond extract
2 TBSP peanut butter
2 TBSP jam, flavour of your choice (I used cherry)
1/4 cup white chocolate chips, melted (I melted them in a double boiler, but a microwave would probably do the trick as well)
40 wonton wrappers

1 TBSP ground cinnamon

Directions:

--Mix together cream cheese, flour, 3/4 cup sugar and salt until combined. Add almond extract and mix. Divide cream cheese mixture into four bowls. Add peanut butter, jam and white chocolate to three bowls, respectively. Mix each until combined.

--Flour a work surface. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Set several wrappers on surface. Place two tsp of filling on one half of wrapper. Wet edges of wrapper with water and fold over to create a half-moon. Press sides together with fingers and place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat until all filling is used up.

--Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Mix three TBSP sugar and cinnamon together. Sprinkle mixture over wontons. Bake wontons for 10-12 minutes, or until sugar has melted and wontons are firm to the touch. Cool on a wire rack, at least 30 minutes. When about to serve, drizzle with Espresso-caramel sauce.

Espresso-Caramel Sauce

Ingredients:

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup light whipping cream, room temperature (caramel will be less likely to seize up if cream isn't added straight from the fridge)

1 TBSP espresso powder or instant coffee, dissolved into 1 TBSP warm water

Directions:

--Stir together sugar and 2 TBSP water in a small saucepan. Have next to stove a small bowl filled with water and a pastry brush; use pastry brush to push sugar granules back into liquid as mixture heats. Bring mixture to a boil and cook until amber brown, 5 to 8 minutes. Swirl pan to even color and cook until medium amber, about 20 seconds more. Remove from heat

--Slowly pour whipping cream into caramel, stirring constantly. Add espresso and stir until combined; mixture may clot slightly, but keep stirring until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use, up to 3 days.