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Cheesecake is undoubtedly one of my most favorite desserts to bake as well as eat. I have baked plenty of cheesecakes over the years, as a whole cheesecake as well as mini cheesecakes. However, recently I baked a whole cheesecake when I found out I’m going to be having more than 20 quests spontaneously want to come over to visit. I thought to myself: How do I turn my cheesecake into mini cheesecake bites?
Turn cheesecake into mini cheesecake bites! Method 1: Chill the cheesecake. Take a hot knife and cut it horizontally and vertically making a grid-like pattern. You’ll get square cheesecake bites. Method 2: Use special long cookie cutters meant for a cake to cut the cheesecake into many shapes like circles, squares, rectangles, and hearts.
Mini cheesecake bites are a fan favorite. They are admired by many, especially by my spontaneous guests. This made me want to perfect my methods of cutting a whole cheesecake into the mini cheesecake bites that everyone loves. These easy few steps will make sure that your mini cheesecake bites will look as appetizing as ever before.
Properly Cut Your Cheesecake Into Mini Cheesecake Bites
While cutting a cheesecake might seem like a simple task, it’s actually a very hard skill to get correct and master. I’ve cut into cheesecakes for many years now and at first, I used to struggle a lot. The cheesecake used to stick to my knife and fall apart every time.
However, as time passed I learned many new ways to make the cheesecake cutting process much cleaner and safer for me as well as the cheesecake.
There are three main methods that I’ve learned throughout my cheesecake cutting journey: The Hot Knife Technique, The Wax Paper Technique, and The Dental Floss Technique.
If you’re looking to bake different-sized cheesecakes, I found the perfect 3 piece set of Springform Pans that I recently got for myself! This 3-piece set comes with 4, 7, and 9-inch Nonstick Springform Pans, which you can check out on Amazon!
Check out my article about How To Cut A Perfect Cheesecake Slice here where I go in-depth about these 3 techniques fully guiding you to properly cutting the perfect cheesecake slices. Learning these 3 methods will definitely help you continue on this mini cheesecake journey with me. So take a minute to read it through and come back to this article. I’m not going anywhere… Great now that you know what to do, let’s move on.
Steps To Cutting Mini Cheesecake Bites:
The first thing you need to do is cool your cheesecake. It doesn’t necessarily have to be for a long time. About 30 minutes in the fridge should be enough for the cheesecake to firm up.
Using either The Hot Knife Technique or The Dental Floss Technique, take your warmed-up knife/dental floss and hover over your cheesecake. Gently make a plus (+) looking impression both horizontally and vertically.
After that, continue making small impressions in both directions from the initial plus (+) sign. I usually leave about 1-inch intervals between each impression to make equal-sized bites.
Once the impressions are done, warm up your knife under hot warm (or use the dental floss), wipe it down, and cut each one of the impressions on your cheesecake separately.
Don’t forget to repeat warming up your knife after every slice is made. Repeat the same process both horizontally and vertically moving outward until you finished making 1-1 inched cheesecake bites.
Since your cheesecake was initially round, you’ll have a couple of stray cheesecake pieces on all four sides of the cake. You have 2 options: Either you add them as more mini cheesecake bites or, my favorite option, eat the stray pieces yourself as a reward.
*Tip: Remember to NEVER cut a cheesecake with a back and forth motion!
I would suggest decorating your mini cheesecake bites. I usually put some sort of mixed nuts or fruits and berries on top of each cheesecake bite. There are many other things that you can put on top of the bites like whipped cream, chocolate drizzle, chocolate chips, and many others to increase the overall presentability of the cake.
Put a toothpick on every single cheesecake bite for your guests to grab with ease. Just make sure the toothpick hits the crust or the bottom of the mini cheesecake might just fly right off. In the end, you’ll have a professional assortment of mini cheesecake bites that your guests will love.
No matter what you decide to put on the cheesecake bites, it will look much better than it did before.
*By the way, if you want to learn How to Travel With Your Cheesecake Safely so that it doesn’t fall apart, I recently wrote about it in my article that you can find here!
Use Special Cutters To Create Fun Looking Cheesecake Bite Shapes
I’m the type of baker that absolutely loves treating myself and my guests to tasty as well as good-looking desserts every time I bake. This made me start looking for more ways to make my cheesecake into mini cheesecake bites. After treating my guests to the square like cheesecake bites I made by hand, I wanted to make them better and prettier. This made me come up with this cookie-cutter method.
This cheesecake bites method might take you some time to get prepared. Preparing for this method is not difficult but you do need to have the appropriate tools in advance.
This method would be perfect to use if you know that your guests are coming ahead of time and you would like to treat them with some fun-shaped mini cheesecake bites.
When I was doing my research, I found a multiset of Stainless Steel Cookie Cutters that would do the job perfectly. At first, I was afraid that cookie cutters, in general, were gonna be too small to reach the bottom of a tall cheesecake-like mine. However, when I found these cutters I was especially surprised.
These cutters are made tall enough to reach the bottom of most cakes which would be perfect for a cheesecake-like mine. They also have a special handle on top of them so that once you put them in your cheesecake, you can easily just pull the cutters back out without losing them in there.
These special Stainless Steel Cookie Cutters are from Amazon and come in several different sizes and shapes. There are 4 sizes of cutters for each shape and there are 5 shapes in total; round, round-ribbed, square, square-ribbed, and heart. The best part is that they aren’t even expensive!
Steps For Cutting Cheesecake With Special Cutters:
Seeing as these cutters are stainless steel, you’ll need to follow a few steps in order to cut the cheesecake into as many mini cheesecake bites as possible.
- Chill the cheesecake in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes
- Choose the right shape and size cutter for your cheesecake (I recommend to use the smallest size since you can get more mini bites out of them)
- Warm up the cutter with hot water for 20 seconds.
- Once the cutter is warm, wipe it down dry with a towel
- Insert the cutter from the outside of the cheesecake first (make sure you go as close to the outside of the cheesecake as possible)
- Pick up the cutter with the mini cheesecake inside and bang it a few times on a clean plate until the mini cheesecake comes out
- Repeat this step along the perimeter of the entire cheesecake
- Continue towards the inside of the cheesecake until nothing is left
Once you are done with all the mini cheesecake bites, you can once again decorate them with many different toppings like whipped cream, chocolate drizzle, different nuts, frozen fruits and berries, and even Nutella! Put toothpicks in each one for an aesthetic cocktail-like look.
I can almost guarantee you that there will be a lot of left-over cheesecake that got cut out of the corners and center of the cheesecake. Don’t eat the leftovers just yet! I have a perfect clever solution on what to do with them so that they don’t go to waste.
Take the remaining pieces of cheesecake and roll them up in your hands to create, you guessed it, cheesecake pops! Create as many as you can! Put lollipop sticks into each one or just leave them the way they are and put them in the fridge to cool down.
To Summarize
Although turning a whole cheesecake into mini cheesecake bites might seem hard at first, with enough repetition, you should eventually become a mini cheesecake master! Using the two methods I listed above, you can guarantee that your guests will have an amazing experience with this new and improved way of presenting your cheesecake.
People Also Ask…
How to cut a cheesecake? Put your cheesecake in the fridge to firm up. Take a thin, sharp knife and run it under hot water. Wipe the knife with a clean towel and cut the cheesecake all the way to the bottom and slide the knife out towards you. Repeat the process before each slice to ensure a clean cut each time.
