With so many national food days, it’s hard to keep up and avoid gaining 30 pounds. I was so excited to see that National Cheesecake Day is coming up this Saturday because I  love cheesecake! My favorite is turtle cheesecake, which I’ve loved ever since I had it at my friend Michelle’s birthday party decades ago.

I flipped through my recipe Rolodex (a.k.a. Pinterest) and grabbed a recipe for turtle cheesecake I’ve been wanting to make for a while. Here’s the original  Turtle Cheesecake recipe that I used.

I accidentally purchased Sugar-Free Chocolate Fudge, but I was too lazy to go exchange it for the regular version so I crossed my fingers that it would work out in the end. Mistake #2, when I started the recipe I realized that it made 48 mini cheesecakes!!! I attempted to halve the recipe, then realized the original recipe was fine since I was doing larger cheesecakes. I reverted back to the original quantities and ended up forgetting to put the other box of cream cheese in the filling mix (Mistake #3).

For the crust, I put the Oreos in a Ziploc bag and crushed them into smaller pieces and added the butter before spooning the mixture into the cupcake liners in each muffin tin. After completing this step, I mixed the filling ingredients and added them to the liners. Since I left out half of the cream cheese, my liners weren’t as full as they could have been and I only ended up with 12  little cheesecakes. I popped them in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 degrees and set them to the side to cool.

After they cooled, I followed the instructions by placing them in the refrigerator for one hour. When the hour was up, I heated the hot fudge (which subsequently spewed out of the container like hot lava) and spooned at little on each cheesecake. I did the same with the caramel topping without heating it. For the pecans, I crushed them into smaller pieces in the bag and sprinkled them over the top.

And voilà! It was delicious in spite of my blunders! I hope you all enjoy whatever cheesecake you decide to have this weekend.

What’s your favorite?