Cubicle kitchen: Oreo Upside Down Cheesecake

What can I say, I'm a giver.  I've written before about how I donate blood every time the drive sets up shop at work.  It's just a little something that makes me feel like I'm doing good, and as long as I don't faint, it's really not a lot of effort on my part.

But what really makes me a giver is what I do with the cookies that are offered as the reward for a hard day's donation.  I prefer to snack on an apple than cookies in the middle of the afternoon, so I bring my own post-poke fruit, and snag a pack of cookies for later.  Or in this case, a pack of cookies to add to my collection of pantry goodies for later baking use.

I suppose that we all imagine that others think in a similar way as us, but every so often you are shown how untrue that is.  Because to me, I see Oreos and immediately see them fitting perfectly in the bottom of a cupcake form.  From there, my mind follows a logical path to Oreo Upside Down Cheesecake.  But my co-workers were amazed that I had come up with such a delight.  There's clearly a sweet spot where the nostalgia of Oreos meets with the decadence of cheesecake and results in people taking the time to stop by my cubicle and thank me for a particularly delicious treat.

I'd like to take all of the credit, but in fact a quick Google search proves that while I may be unique to my office, I am certainly not the only person on the internet to think of this.  The recipe I used even comes from Kraft, so it's relatively 'established'.  This was my first foray into cheesecakes as an independent, adult baker, so I wanted a tried, tested, and true recipe.  This was certainly that.  And as much as I'd like to take credit, I don't think the reason they tasted so good was because of their good samaritan origins

Oreo Upside Down Cheesecake
Recipe from Kraft

My Notes:

• The recipe says it makes 12, but I got 27 little cheesecakes.  I could have filled the cups a little more (I'm so used to cakes that rise), but you could safely presume to get at least 18 from this recipe.  Keep that in mind when considering how many Oreos you're going to need to have on hand.
• 24 of the cakes were baked in paper-lined cupcake pans, while the three were using my silicon cups.  I only have six of these, so I couldn't really use them for the whole batch, given the baking and setting time.  While that would have been less wasteful, it was easier to remove the paper wrappers than to extract the cheesecakes from the mold, particularly with the Oreo on the bottom intact.
• I baked for the prescribed amount of time, but I could probably have pulled them a minute or two early, they were slightly brown on the bottom edges.
• I used the suggested variation of substituting Neufchatel cream cheese and light sour cream.