Miniature Cinnamon Roll Cheesecakes

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The BEST DESSERT! Miniature cinnamon roll cheesecakes with a delicious cinnamon swirl and cream cheese frosting topping! Via chelseasmessyapron.com

Miniature-sized cheesecakes with a cinnamon-sugar swirl and a cream cheese topping. These mini desserts taste just like a cinnamon roll in a cheesecake form. 

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The BEST DESSERT! Miniature cinnamon roll cheesecakes with a delicious cinnamon swirl and cream cheese frosting topping! Via chelseasmessyapron.com

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed my obsession with miniature desserts. Namely miniature cheesecakes. Not only have there been lemon-blueberry cheesecakes here, but oreo ones have made their debut as well.

Clearly, I love mini desserts.

These cheesecakes have swirls on cinnamon sugar goodness and are covered (drenched?) in a cream cheese frosting. Just how I love cinnamon rolls. The more frosting = better.

These cheesecakes are super simple. No water bath is needed and they only bake for about 20-22 minutes. The only hard part is waiting for them to cool. 1 hour at room temperature + 2 hours in the fridge. But it will all be worth it!

You’ll want to start with a homemade graham cracker crust. And this recipe calls for a thick crust which I personally think is a requirement for cheesecakes.

Next, the actual cheesecake. The cheesecake is pretty standard. The usual ingredients: lots of cream cheese, plenty of white sugar, a tad bit of flour, a few drops of vanilla extract, and one large egg.

And of course, there has to be a cinnamon swirl in these cinnamon roll cheesecakes —  softened butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar are mixed to create the *perfect* cinnamon-sugar filling. That filling gets swirled into the cheesecake TWICE. First, on top of the graham cracker crust, you’ll spoon out a bit of the cheesecake filling, then some of the cinnamon-sugar filling gets swirled around. And next, you’ll layer a bit more cheesecake and top it off with more cinnamon-sugar swirled in.

The most important thing to note with this recipe is the mixing of the cheesecake. You want to mix only on low speed so you don’t whip air into the mixture. The more air that gets whipped into these cheesecakes, the more they will rise and then fall when being baked. It is normal for the cheesecakes to rise a bit in the oven, but once they are cooled, they deflate quite a bit. Mixing slowly and using room temperature ingredients will keep the fall to a minimum :). Enjoy!

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Miniature Cinnamon Roll Cheesecakes

4.85 from 19 votes
Miniature cinnamon roll cheesecakes with a delicious cinnamon swirl and cream cheese frosting topping
Print Recipe

Miniature Cinnamon Roll Cheesecakes

4.85 from 19 votes
Miniature cinnamon roll cheesecakes with a delicious cinnamon swirl and cream cheese frosting topping
Course Dessert
Cuisine American
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 22 minutes
Total Time 52 minutes
Servings 9 cheesecakes
Chelsea Lords
Calories 352kcal

Ingredients

Crust:

  • 4 full sheets of graham crackers
  • 1 tablespoon brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons butter (unsalted or salted) melted

Cheesecake:

  • 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 tablespoons white flour
  • 1 large egg at room temperature

Cinnamon-sugar swirl

  • 1/4 cup butter (unsalted or salted) softened, not melted
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon white flour

Cream cheese topping

  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 tablespoons butter at room temperature
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
  • 1 - 1 and 1/2 tablespoons heavy cream or whole milk, only if needed

Instructions

Crust

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a regular sized muffin tin with 9 liners and fill up half of the other empty spaces with water. This ensures even baking. Spray the liners with non-stick spray. (Cinnamon sugar mixture gets sticky!)
  • In a food processor, pulse the graham crackers to crumbs. Stir in the sugar and melted butter. Press an even amount of graham cracker crust into the bottom of each muffin liner.
  • Press down the crust with a milk cap or the backside of a tablespoon measuring spoon and set aside.

Cheesecake

  • In a medium sized bowl, combine the room temperature cream cheese and white sugar. Beat gently only on low speed until smooth and creamy. Do not vigorously mix at all (this beats in air and will cause the cheesecakes to rise and fall a lot) Add in the vanilla extract, flour, and a lightly beaten egg. Beat until just combined (again very gently mixing as little as possible).

Cinnamon-Sugar Swirl

  • In a small bowl, combine the softened (do not melt) butter, brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon. Stir until completely combined to a thick paste.
  • Spoon 1 tablespoon of the cheesecake filling into each of the prepared 9 cups. Then place 1/2 teaspoon of the cinnamon sugar swirl on top. Swirl the cinnamon sugar into the cheesecake with a toothpick.
  • Top the rest of the cheesecake filling on top (about 1 more tablespoon per cheesecake) and then disperse the remaining cinnamon sugar (about 1/2 teaspoon) swirl evenly among the 9 cheesecakes.
  • Swirl the cinnamon sugar (again) on top of the cheesecake with a toothpick and bake for 20-22 minutes. The centers will still jiggle a little bit, but the edges should be a very light brown.
  • Remove from the oven and let cool at room temperature for 1 hour and then transfer to the fridge and let cool for at least 2 hours.
  • The cheesecakes will have risen in the oven and will deflate quite a bit while cooling.

Cream cheese topping

  • Cream together the powdered sugar, butter, vanilla extract and cream cheese. Slowly add in the heavy cream (if needed for a thinner frosting) until desired consistency is reached.
  • Spoon over the cooled cheesecakes and drizzle extra cream cheese frosting on top.

Recipe Notes

The total time does not account for the 3 hours of chilling time.

Nutrition Facts

Calories: 352kcal

We do our best to provide accurate nutritional analysis for our recipes. Our nutritional data is calculated using a third-party algorithm and may vary, based on individual cooking styles, measurements, and ingredient sizes. Please use this information for comparison purposes and consult a health professional for nutrition guidance as needed.

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86 Comments

  1. Oh my gosh, stop it. Cinnamon rolls and cheesecake! Best idea ever. These are so cute and they look insanely good! Love all that swirly cinnamon. I totally get thinking about food all the time, especially between meals, haha. Glad you made a food blog, girl! You definitely have a talent for it. 🙂

  2. I love to experiment with different cinnamon roll recipes. This is really a different way to go…Thanks for sharing. I think I will try your cinnamon-sugar swirl in my yeast cinnamon rolls instead of the traditional method.

  3. These look amazing and they are so cute! I’m going to have to try this and hope mine come out as cute as yours! 🙂 I love that they are made with a graham cracker crust! I’m glad to know I’m not the only one thinking about creating food all day long, I especially do this while standing in front of the dessert isle at the store, I’m sure I get some funny looks for standing there so long! Pinned!

    1. Haha I am soo glad I’m not the only one that has food on my mind all the time. And I totally know about standing in front of dessert isles. I could be there all day 🙂 Thanks for the pin Marti!

    1. Haha! Thanks Tiffany 🙂 Wishing I lived in Utah so I could swap you some of these for like fifty of your oatmeal cookie skillet. Dying over that recipe and those photos!

  4. 5 stars
    Wow. Just wow. You are an epic dessert genius. I saw this yesterday and made it last night for a dinner party. Huge success. People moaned when they ate these. Moaned. Then lamented that there were no more, followed by many requests for the recipe. I ran upstairs to my office and printed a few cards with the recipe and your web address. Pinterest in person 🙂

    1. Hey Christine! Can I just say this comment completely made my weekend!! I’m so glad you enjoyed the cheesecakes and thanks so much for passing along the recipe and my site 🙂 Pinterest in person – haha – love it! 🙂

  5. Hi, these look and sound delicious , could u make them in mini muffin tins or would you stick with regular size muffin tins ? Can’t wait to make them!

    1. Hi Jennifer. Thank you! I would recommend doing them in a regular sized muffin tin. With all the cinnamon and sugar they tend to be pretty sticky. I think they wouldn’t come out of mini muffin liners as well, but those are just my thoughts. If you give it a go with the mini ones I’d love to hear the results!

  6. 5 stars
    Just made these, waiting to put the frosting on them. they smell absolutely amazing!:) my grandma is loving the idea of cinnamon and cheese cake.

    1. Yay! So glad you made them and thanks for taking the time to comment 🙂 Hope you love them!

  7. Would it be possible to make these in mini muffin tins? Would the cooking time need to be adjusted? Thanks! These look amazing!

    1. I wouldn’t recommend making them in miniature muffin tins but I haven’t tried it. If you do, the baking time would need to be adjusted; I’m not sure to what though since I haven’t done it. If you try it out I would love to hear the results!

  8. 5 stars
    I made the mistake of making these without reading the comments. I thought they were cooked in mini muffin tins and they ended up running over and making a bit of a mess but they were the most delicious mess I’ve ever made. The cheesecake filling is soo good and the cinnamon is over the top. Thanks for sharing.

    1. Glad you liked it! Yes definitely use a regular muffin tin and hopefully these will work out better for you next time! 🙂

  9. Could you provide the measurement needed if I were to use purchased graham cracker crumbs instead of the sheets? This recipe sounds so delicious!

    1. Thanks so much for the feedback Cammie! I will look into getting something with a Facebook tab 🙂

  10. Hi Chelsea! I love everything you post and try to make most of your recipes. I made the cinnamon cheesecakes last night and have a couple of questions: In the pictured description/commentary you say “the swirl gets a little crazy, MELTED butter, etc” but in the recipe itself it says” room temperature” = which is your preferred????? Also, when I made the swirl and mixed 1/2 cup room temp butter with 1/2 cup sugar it made a “paste” and wasn’t easy to swirl. So dear Chelsea where did I go wrong?? Oh – bottom line is that they were still VERY delicious. I would like to make them again but would totally appreciate you clearing up the melted vs. room temp butter. MANY THANKS!!

    1. Hi Rosa! You are so sweet – that really makes my day to hear that! Sorry to have a few mistype on my recipe – hopefully I can clear it up for you 🙂 The butter should be MELTED, not at room temperature for that swirl. That should make it a lot easier to stir together those swirl ingredients. Sorry about that, but thank you so much for checking so I can update my recipe and make it better for other 🙂 Glad you enjoyed these!!

  11. 5 stars
    Hi! I’m so glad that I came across your recipe – it is EXCELLENT! I was looking for something to make for an annual holiday party that requires no silverware/individual servings. I read all of the comments, saw how others were also interested in a smaller version so I wanted to share that I successfully made this recipe into 24 mini cheesecakes (metal pan). I followed your recipe exactly and just figured that it would be a matter of trial and error as I went along…
    – I placed a mini paper liner, sprayed it as instructed (really helped) and put a loose 1/2 tablespoon of crust for each – had about a tablespoon left over, which I promptly ate 🙂
    – I used a damper to flatten the bottom and it took less than 5 minutes. For those of you that bake tarts or mini crusts, a damper is invaluable – you will love it!
    – I filled each half way and then swirled in approximately a 1/4 teaspoon of the cinnamon/sugar mix. I then topped off the remaining cheesecake mixture and swirled in another 1/4 teaspoon. It was a perfect amount – no cheesecake mixture was leftover.
    – By the time I did all of this, my cinnamon/sugar mix had set, so I microwaved it for about 20 seconds to make it liquidy again. I did have a lot of the cinnamon/sugar mixture left over, I’d say about half.
    – I baked it for 20 minutes – they were great, but next time I think that they’ll be fine at 18. They were still soft, but some crusty cinnamon/sugar edges. You really can’t go wrong. 🙂
    – They were amazing on their own! A few didn’t make it to get topped with the frosting… Per my taste, this was the only thing that I changed from the original recipe – I only added one cup of the powdered sugar and after filling the tops, I had to add a little milk (about a tablespoon and a little more) to get it to a drizzle-like consistency.
    We all love them and I will definitely be making them for the party in December. I will double everything except the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Thank you so much and I hope that my mini measurements are helpful for the holiday season.

  12. 5 stars
    Hi! I’m so glad that I came across your recipe – it is EXCELLENT! I was looking for something to make for an annual holiday party that requires no silverware/individual servings. I read all of the comments, saw how others were also interested in a smaller version so I wanted to share that I successfully made this recipe into 24 mini cheesecakes (metal pan). I followed your recipe exactly and just figured that it would be a matter of trial and error as I went along…
    – I placed a mini paper liner, sprayed it as instructed (really helped) and put a loose 1/2 tablespoon of crust for each – had about a tablespoon left over, which I promptly ate 🙂
    – I used a damper to flatten the bottom and it took less than 5 minutes. For those of you that bake tarts or mini crusts, a damper is invaluable – you will love it!
    – I filled each half way and then swirled in approximately a 1/4 teaspoon of the cinnamon/sugar mix. I then topped off the remaining cheesecake mixture and swirled in another 1/4 teaspoon. It was a perfect amount – no cheesecake mixture was leftover.
    – By the time I did all of this, my cinnamon/sugar mix had set, so I microwaved it for about 20 seconds to make it liquidy again. I did have a lot of the cinnamon/sugar mixture left over, I’d say about half.
    – I baked it for 20 minutes – they were great, but next time I think that they’ll be fine at 18. They were still soft, but some crusty cinnamon/sugar edges. You really can’t go wrong. 🙂
    – They were amazing on their own! A few didn’t make it to get topped with the frosting… Per my taste, this was the only thing that I changed from the original recipe – I only added one cup of the powdered sugar and after filling the tops, I had to add a little milk (about a tablespoon and a little more) to get it to a drizzle-like consistency.
    We all love them and I will definitely be making them for the party in December. I will double everything except the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Thank you so much and I hope that my mini measurements are helpful.

    1. I’m so happy you loved this recipe!!! And thank you so much for taking the time to write up all your notes on making these cheesecakes miniature — SO helpful!! I really appreciate it and I’m sure a lot of others do as well! Thanks Ingrid 🙂

  13. How long can this stay in the fridge? Ie could it be made a night or two before a dinner party? Maybe drizzle the icing on the day of the party, or does that not even matter?

    1. I would try and make them only 1 day in advance 🙂 And the icing can be drizzled on in advance or right before — it’s fine either way 🙂

  14. 5 stars
    I just recently tried these out and they were a huge hit! Problem is I have a large family and I only made one batch (I wanted to try them out before trying to double or triple) so they were gone in about 2 seconds flat! By the way maple extract is a great enhancement to the frosting I was raised with maple frosting on my cinnamon rolls so I decided to try it on these and it is delicious! I was just wondering do you think it would turn out firm enough if I make it in a cheesecake pan or should I try to experiment with another cheesecake recipe? Baking is my favorite hobby and I love trying new recipes and your blog has about all the recipes I could ever need ☺ Thanks so much!

    1. Haha!! That’s awesome these flew out so fast 🙂 And the maple frosting sounds amazing! I’m actually not super confident this recipe would work in a springform pan, so I’d recommend trying out a different recipe. Thanks for your kind comments, I hope you love whatever you try next! 🙂

  15. Hi, Have just found this on Pinterest. We don’t have Graham Crackers in Australia, so I’d use one of the bases I use in other cheesecakes. But can I ask what 4 sheets of Graham crackers would be equivalent to in weight?

    1. It should be about 1/2 cup which I’m not sure weight equivalents. So sorry wish I could be of more help!

  16. 5 stars
    Muito bom esses bolos,estou organizando a festa de aniversário de meu primeiro filho e estou a procura de novidades por que quero o melhor para esse dia encontrei essa receita que para mim é perfeita tem tudo para agradar o paladar de todos essa vai ser minha aposta.

  17. The mini cinn roll cheesecake looks so yummy, will try to bake it soon. I am guessing when you say white Flour you Are referring to AP flour and not SR flour, is that correct? Thank you…..

  18. 5 stars
    These were amazing! Just finished frosting them and of course I had to be the royal taste tester first before I served them. I did tweak the recipe a tad (used biscoff as crust instead if graham) so didn’t need to add the brown sugar to the base and also added just a hint of ground ginger to the cheesecake filling and some cinnatoast sugar sprinkles ontop of the frosting. Thank you so much love these.

  19. 5 stars
    They were easy to make and yummy! I will try cutting the butter in the swirl next time just to reduce the fat, but otherwise perfect. Thanks!

  20. I noticed the recipe calls for a regular muffin, but the actual picture looks like a mini muffin pan was used. Mini or regular is the question?

  21. Just made these and you are so right.. hardest part is the waiting time! Made them today and they are in the fridge ! Can’t hardly wait to try them!!!!

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