mini musical cheesecake tarts

The first time I baked a birthday present for O, it was a pan of brownie-bottom pumpkin-swirled cheesecake bars. A pretty delicious dessert, perfectly in-season for the last weeks of autumn when winter was slowly beginning to sink into the cobblestone streets downtown. I very much enjoyed them, as I am wont to do whenever cream cheese is involved, and I figured she might as well.

Lucky for me, she adored them. The following year, I baked her another batch. Why mess with a good thing, after all?

So when she first asked me to bake for her recital a few weeks ago, she casually remarked that I could “maybe bake those pumpkin cheesecake bites you made for my birthday.” 

…There was a hint if I’d ever heard one.

Well, these weren’t quite those pumpkin bars, but I think they did the job well enough.

brownie bottom pumpkin cheesecake squares

I sometimes can’t help but laugh at myself. Well, “sometimes” is a bit of an understatement. Usually, though, it’s due largely to some sort of public embarrassment or Noosh publicizing my frequent foot-in-mouth slip-ups in the form of Facebook statuses for all of our mutual friends to shake their heads in dismay over.

(I’m sure many of my readers can attest.)

But other times, I put my hands on my hips, take a glance around the absurdity of the knick-knacks lining the walls and littering the floor of our apartment, and I can’t help but grin. It’s a caricature, really, of all the things Noosh and I have been obsessed with over the course of our time living together. (We’ve known each other for 12 years, and we still find ways to surprise ourselves with incredulity. The testament of a true friend.) Scrolls of Hogwarts houses sitting above the sofa; a gloriously life-sized, 6’2 cardboard cut-out of Tenth Doctor; TV shelf piled high with video game cases and movies from the ‘guy section’ of our cabinet, topped with the occasional chick-flick for good measure.

apple pie cheesecake bars

So, some of you may notice…this isn’t really a new post. By that I mean, I didn’t make these. I mean, I did make them, just not today. Or this month. Or this calendar year.

Yeah, I decided that my egregiously lengthy hiatuses between updates needed to be broken up somehow, but I’ve not had the time to actually sit down and bake something. So, a great big apology, dear readers, but at least you can have some pretty photos in the mean time. Why am I reposting these, specifically? Well, easy:

1. It’s almost autumn, and
2. They are literally one of the most delicious things on the planet, and you are not really living until you’ve had one.