Chocolate Bourbon Cheesecake Cups

Sometimes you just need an easy dessert that takes only a few minutes to prepare. These   Bourbon cheesecakes don’t require any baking or special baking skills. Despite the recipe being super simple with only 6 ingredients, they make an impressive show-stopper at a dinner party.

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Bourbon Creams

For those who aren’t familiar with Bourbon creams, they’re a British sandwich biscuit made from two thin layers of chocolate-flavoured biscuits, filled with a chocolate cream filling. 

The tiny holes in the biscuits are there to prevent the biscuits from cracking while they bake. It allows the steam to escape, which ensures all the biscuits bake perfectly even.

I enjoy Bourbons with hot tea any day. I feel like I could happily consume an entire pack in one sitting. They have made it to my top 5 favourite biscuits of all time.

Some people generally think bourbons are just boring biscuits, but I can assure you, after you try this recipe you will understand how much they are missing out. 

Biscuit Base

First, we’re going to make the biscuit base as this will be the first layer in the dessert pots.

To make the biscuit base you will need…

Bourbon Creams: It would be a bourbon cheesecake without them. I used just under 3 packs in total for this recipe and I believe each pack contains around 13 biscuits.

Unsalted Butter: A small amount of butter will help the biscuits stick together but also prevent the biscuits from moving when piping the cheesecake filling.

Usually, I use around 180 grams of biscuits for most of my dessert cup recipes, however, sandwich biscuits weigh more because of the filling meaning you need more biscuits, So I did end up using around 210g of Bourbon creams for this recipe.

Although this recipe uses more grams of biscuits I still kept the amount of butter the same. This is because the cream inside the biscuit will also help bind the biscuit together. Adding more butter will cause the base to become too solid making it difficult to eat out of the dessert cup. 

Cheesecake Ingredients

For the cheesecakes, I made a milk chocolate flavour filling. You could also add some dark chocolate too, for a much deeper chocolatey flavour.

Here is a list of ingredients you will need to make the chocolate cheesecake mix:

Soft cream cheese: Always make sure the cream cheese is at room temperature. Otherwise, it will cause the mixture to become lumpy if the cream cheese is cold from the fridge.

Icing Sugar: (Powdered sugar) If your Icing sugar is lumpy I’d recommend sieving it through a sieve to break down any large clumps. Usually, my icing sugar is fine, so I don’t usually sieve it.

Chocolate: To make this cheesecake chocolate flavoured I used milk chocolate because it's sweet and not too overpowering in flavour. 

Double Cream: (Heavy Cream) is a cream with a high-fat content, which means when you whip it up it will hold its shape and form soft peaks. Make sure the cream is cold when you use it. During summer I like to leave the cream in the fridge until I’m ready to use it to prevent it from warming up.

…And that’s pretty much all you need for the cheesecake part. 

Tips When Making The Cheesecake

When selecting ingredients it's important to use full-fat cream cheese as well as double cream (heavy cream) instead of single cream. This is because the fat content is what causes the cheesecake mixture to hold its shape when whipped.

Also if you are from the UK you may have noticed they only sell spreadable cream cheese rather than blocks of cream cheese. When opening a pack of soft cream cheese there is always a small amount of liquid sitting on top. I’d recommend pouring any excess liquids out to ensure the cheesecake sets properly.

When melting the chocolate warm it up in 10-second bursts, making sure to mix the chocolate in between each interval. Otherwise, you run the risk of burning the chocolate. Alternatively, you can use the Bain Marie method too. 

When adding the chocolate to the cheesecake mixture I’d recommend whisking it in before adding the cold double cream. 

Why you may ask? Well, it’s because the chocolate has been tempered, which means it will set firm when it cools. If you add the chocolate after adding the cold cream, the chocolate will set almost instantly causing lumps of chocolate throughout the cheesecake mixture.

Decorating

For this recipe, I decided to keep the decorating simple. I decorated each dessert cup with crushed-up Bourbon Creams and then add a whole bourbon cream at a slight angle. 

You could even go the extra mile by adding whipped cream to the tops of each dessert cup and then drizzling each one with melted chocolate.

The design options are endless.

Products Used

Here is a list of a few products you might need to make this recipe:

Dessert Cups: For this recipe, I used 3oz round dessert cups. You could use any cups or pots you like.

Piping Bags: I’d recommend using a good-quality piping bag because you don’t want your mixture to burst through the bags halfway through the piping. 

Fondant Rolling Pin: This is a fantastic tool for crushing up biscuits. I usually use a crush-and-rotate method to get the biscuit to a super fine crumb. If you're in a hurry you can also use a food processor instead.

Mixing Bowl: Make sure the bowl is big enough, you don’t want the ingredients to spill out when you turn on the electric whisk.

Electric Whisk: You don’t have to use an expensive one. An electric whisk will help incorporate a lot more air making the cheesecakes light and creamy.

Spatula: It's important to scrape down the sizes of the bowl to ensure all the ingredients get equally mixed. I also use it to fill up the piping bag to ensure none of the cheesecake gets wasted.

Measuring Spoons: Measuring spoons make dividing the biscuits into each cup a lot easier and time efficient.

Some other Cheesecake Recipes I think you may also like…

• Kinder Bueno Cheesecake Cups
• Ferrero Rocher Cheesecake Cups
• Biscoff Cheesecake Cups
• Chocolate Milkshake Cheesecake Cups