As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemakers program, I received these Fig & Honey Newton's Fruit Thins cookies to sample. The cookies are actually quite delicious with their crisp texture and flecks of fig and cinnamon; they're begging to be dunked in coffee or tea. And at 140 calories for three cookies, they're fairly guilt-free too.
I'll admit my first thought didn't go the guilt-free route at all (shocking). The cookies are pretty large and perfectly shaped for ice cream sandwiches, and I think they would make a lovely home for a heaping scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, but I wanted to do something a little more involved and it dawned on me that the texture of the Newton's Fruit Thins were similar to that of a graham cracker, so I thought…cheesecake! I crushed them up and used them to make the crust for my lemon-honey mini cheesecakes. The result was sweet and fruity deliciousness.
Lemon-Honey Mini Cheesecakes
12 Newton's Fruit Thins Fig & Honey cookies, crushed into crumbs
2-3 tbsps unsalted butter, melted (for crust)
2 packages Philadelphia cream cheese
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon zest
Sour Cream Topping
1/2 cup sour cream
2 tsps sugar
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp honey
Preheat the oven to 325.
Break the cookies and grind up in the food processor. Slowly add in the melted butter and blend until incorporated and the texture is crumbly and slightly buttery.
Beat the cream cheese and sugar together. Add the vanilla, lemon juice, lemon zest and honey. Blend on medium-high speed until creamy.
Add the eggs one at a time and blend on a medium-high speed until well incorporated. Don't overmix.
Scoop around 1 1/2 teaspoons of the cookie-crumb mixture into the bottom of a 24-cup mini muffin pan. Press down with your fingers or a shot glass to make even.
Scoop around 1 1/2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture into the muffin cups. They should fill the cups about 3/4 of the way up.
Bake at 325 for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before adding the sour cream topping.
My only complaint was that the bits of fig in the cookies made them a little hard to scoop out of the muffin pan – some of them broke in half or separated from the crust entirely. Still, I brought the tiny confections to a friend's BBQ and everyone really liked them; the cookie crust made it different than your standard graham cracker-crust cheesecake. Bravo, Newton's. You have successfully made a cookie with fruit after all those years of convincing me that Newton's was a cookie that just THINKS it's a fruit…
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