Cheesecake muffins have been on my to-do list for a while now. Their portions are bite-sized and smaller in general, which is exactly what I wanted. I don’t make huge keto desserts often, mainly because I only need a sweet snack once in a while and making a whole cake would just go to waste pretty fast. If you feel the same about making ketogenic desserts, this one’s for you.
In this easy keto cheesecake muffins recipe, I swapped cream cheese for cottage cheese. It’s really similar to the traditional German kind that calls for quark cheese, which is difficult to get in the U.S but available everywhere in Europe. The difference between cottage cheese and quark cheese is their softness and protein content. On the other hand, cream cheese is more tangy and flavorful in comparison to both cottage cheese or quark cheese.
For more information on different types of soft cheeses, read this article from Kim Severson for The New York Times. It’s short, easy to read, and explains all the differences in less than a minute of reading!
Can I make cheesecake substitutions?
I honestly think this recipe is really generous in terms of ingredients. It will work one way or another, even if you use cream cheese instead of cottage cheese. If you do that, you may not need to add mascarpone and just use cream cheese only (same amount weight-wise). This is because cottage cheese has much more water than any other cheese.
However, I wouldn’t substitute coconut flour for almond flour here. Coconut flour is meant to absorb moisture, and this is exactly what we want here. In actuality, you should NEVER try to use these keto flours interchangeably! While I think it might work in this easy keto cheesecake recipe, with different ratios of course, you’re doing it at your own risk!
Silicone or metal?
If we were making a regular mini cheesecake recipe, I’d always go for metal pans. But ever since I started to cook and bake more and more on the ketogenic diet, I will never go back to metal or ceramic pans. This is because ketogenic baking is really fragile in general, and most of cakes or other low carb desserts will stick to metal pans 99.9%. Plus, the ease of silicone pans and moulds is ridiculously appealing to me – no mess, less cleaning, no scraping burnt sides etc. What else can a busy gal want?!
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