This recipe starts, as most of my recipes do, with a recipe from Cooking Light - this one for Mini Peppermint and Chocolate Chip Cheesecakes.

And while the original recipe is good, I've never made this recipe the same way twice. Today: S'Mores and Animal Cracker variations.

To start, I made 2 different crusts - I substituted animal crackers for the chocolate wafers for half of the cheesecakes. The animal cracker crust was great! I omitted mint, but still used chocolate chips, plus added some cinnamon to the tops before baking.

For the S'Mores cheesecakes, I used chocolate graham crackers for the crust. Then I added some crumbled honey graham crackers and diced homemade marshmallows to what was left of the animal cracker cheesecake filling.

These are great cheesecakes to take to a party - they're bite-sized and the yield is 4 dozen!

Ingredients

Crust:
1 cup chocolate wafer crumbs (such as Nabisco's Famous Chocolate Wafers; about 22 cookies)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Filling:
12 hard peppermint candies, divided
2/3 cup (5 ounces) block-style fat-free cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup (4 ounces) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 large egg whites
1 large egg
1 (8-ounce) carton low-fat sour cream
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate minichips
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
1 cup frozen fat-free whipped topping, thawed
2 tablespoons chocolate sprinkles

Preparation

Preheat oven to 325°.

To prepare crust, combine the first 3 ingredients in a small bowl. Press about 1 1/2 teaspoons crumb mixture into the bottom of each of 48 mini muffin cups coated with cooking spray. Bake at 325° for 5 minutes.

To prepare the filling, place 6 candies, fat-free cream cheese and the next 6 ingredients (fat-free cream cheese through sour cream) in a food processor; process until smooth. Stir in minichips and peppermint extract. Divide the filling evenly among prepared crusts. Bake at 325° for 12 minutes or until done. Cool in pans on a wire rack for 30 minutes. Remove mini cheesecakes from pans, and cool completely. Top each mini cheesecake with 1 teaspoon whipped topping. Crush the remaining 6 candies; sprinkle the crushed candies and chocolate sprinkles over the cheesecakes.