Mini Kumquat Cheesecakes

Jaime and Al hosted a barbecue on Saturday afternoon. You can barely tell Heidi is pregnant in the picture above! It was really nice to hang out with good friends on a warm (okay, HOT) weekend evening watching the kids play.
The house was full of boys with Jack (3), Vincent (18 months), and Mason (6 months). Mase was a little nervous around all of the commotion and noise but eventually got used to it (or at least stopped crying when someone screamed.) He was pretty content in Vinny's high chair at the table with the mommies. Clay, Al, and Tage were in the next room watching baseball.For dessert I brought these cupcakes and Mini Kumquat Cheesecakes. Let me first say that it was foolish of me to assume that just because my friends are all in their 30s' now (except for Lindsey, who will be there in 4 months) that meant they are mature enough to say the word "kumquat" without snickering. Not so! At any rate, I happened to have kumquats in my refrigerator when I came across this post from the Poor Girl Eats Well blog introduced to me by Elaine. I'm a serious sucker for cheesecake so of course I had to try it... the barbecue was just a good excuse. It was really easy to make but slicing and removing the seeds from the small kumquats was a bit labor intensive. The result was awesome though. The candied kumquats were tart and delicious with the sweet, light cheesecake filling. As Roseanne put it, "The graham crackers were key." The recipe doesn't call for them but I added a couple of squares as a garnish and ended up wishing I had taken the time to crush more graham crackers and add a couple of layers when I assembled the individual servings. This recipe made enough for 10 ramekins.

Also, I made these the night before so all I had to do was take them out of the refrigerator, garnish and go. In all honesty, if your friends aren't very adventurous when it comes to their desserts, can't stop giggling at the word "kumquat" or there are Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes around to compete with, you'll be taking home a few extra individual cheesecakes... but if you're me, you are totally fine with that!