Blueberry Cream Cheese Tarts

Today was the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon at my daughter's school and I signed up to send in a dessert. I thought I'd do a mini cheesecake recipe that I've made several times and always loved. It was a recipe I saw on an episode of Paula Deen's "Paula's Home Cooking" show a long time ago. This recipe is incredibly easy to throw together and is a really great dessert for picnics or cookouts.

The idea was that my daughter would just take the dessert with her on the bus and take it to the office at her school for me since i have to be at work so darn early every day...Not such a great idea. Poor Maura dropped the container of cheesecakes while she was waiting for the bus. She felt really really badly about it! So anyway, the cheesecakes didn't end up making it to school. I feel really bad about the teachers not getting their treat, but I'm sure there were other desserts, and what can ya do? It was an accident. And now I have 12 smooshed mini cheesecakes to tempt me in my fridge :-)

Here's a pic of the disaster:
And here's the recipe:

Blueberry Cream Cheese Tarts (source: Paula's Home Cooking)
~2 8oz packages cream cheese, softened (I usually use 1/3 less fat cream cheese and that works just fine)
~1 cup sugar
~1 tsp vanilla extract
~2 eggs
~12 vanilla wafers
~1 (21 ounce) can blueberry pie filling, or other pie filling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place paper liner in each cup of a 12 cup muffin pan.

Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla beating well. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Place vanilla wafer, flat side down, in each muffin cup. Spoon cream cheese mixture over wafers, filling liners almost to the top. Bake for 20-23 minutes. Allow tarts to cool completely. Serve with blueberry pie filling on top, or pie filling of your choice.

These are much better the next day, but should be chilled in the fridge for at least 3-4 hours before serving. Otherwise, they stick to the liners and become an awful mess. I learned that the hard way. Next time, I may try these with lemon extract instead of vanilla. I love the blueberry and lemon combo.