hooray...

Hooray for the red, white and blue!!!  We had a wonderful weekend celebrating our country's birthday, and hope you did too! 

For the most part, we laid low for the long weekend and didn't do anything overly strenuous.  Chams and I did make it over to Homewood to catch Thunder on the Mountain.  For you Birmingham folks, did I miss something, or did they not play Lee Greenwood during the fireworks show?  Talk about total let down.  Maybe I just zoned out.

For the celebratory event, Chams made some ribs.  We all know he's a Smoker-master, but since there was a chance of rain on Monday, he made the ribs in the oven.

They just fell off the bone...and Dreamland sauce and ribs just go hand in hand.  I love them on the smoker, but for a rainy day, they'll do just fine.  Here is where he got the recipe.

My contribution came from my latest and greatest love:  Pinterest.  It's like picture-blog-idea overload.  If you're not a member yet and want to be, send me your email and I'll send over an invite!

Anyway, back to my contribution.  I found these little guys and knew I had to make them pronto.  Oreo's are a weakness of mine, and paired with cheesecake...well that's just dangerous.

photo & recipe via: Handle the Heat

I even made them with lower-fat cream cheese and sour cream, and they were still great!!

Here's the recipe:

Cookies and Cream Cheesecake Cupcakes

(I, like the blog suggests, halved the recipe to prevent Oreo overload, and it was very easy)

42 Oreos, 30 left whole, and 12 coarsely chopped

2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten

1 cup sour cream

Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  Line standard muffin tins with liners.  Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup. 

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.  Gradually add sugar and beat until combined.  Beat in vanilla.  Drizzle in eggs slowly, beating to combine and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Beat in sour cream and salt.  Stir in chopped cookies by hand.

Divide batter evenly among cookie-lined cups, filling each almost to the top.  Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes.  Transfer to wire racks to cool. 

Refrigerate at least 4 hours.  Remove from tins just before serving.  Enjoy!!

My end-result picture wasn't as pretty as the one from the blog, so we'll just imagine mine were that pretty too.  They were so easy, and such a great 4 bite dessert!  Especially for the fellow Oreo lovers out there! 

Happy hump day, and happy 100th post to The Chambless Ranch!!!  How exciting is that!!