Do Tell, Anabel: Mini Conversation Heart Cheesecakes!

What would Valentine's Day be without a themed dessert, right?
This year, I'm pretty much unable to do anything too fancy schmancy, given I'm literally weeks away from giving birth and not very high on energy...
But Valentine's Day is a fun time to celebrate, especially with kids.
So I decided to make my own mini conversation heart cheesecakes, inspired by a recipe I saw on hungryhappenings.com.
The recipe is easy to make (and it's really a great cheesecake recipe) but getting the actual hearts to look like the candy was somewhat time-consuming.
Nonetheless, when my husband and son looked at the dessert set-up on the table and took a bite of their mini cheesecake, their reaction was priceless and made it all worth it!

Supplies:
*Wilton Heart-shaped Mini Treat Mold
*Wilton Foodwriter (Edible color marker)

Ingredients-- (This recipe makes a set of six mini cheesecakes using the Wilton heart-shaped molds and a regular-sized round cheesecake)
For the crust:
*18 squares of graham cracker crumbs (About 1 1/4 cups)
*4 TSBP butter (melted)

For the cheesecake filling:
*2 blocks of cream cheese (16 oz)
*3 Eggs
*1 Cup Sugar
*1 Pint Sour Cream (16 oz)
*1 TSP vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Crumble the graham crackers. Combine graham cracker crumbs and melted butter.
Spoon a tablespoon of the crumb mixture into each heart cavity and use the remainder for the big pie dish. Press the crumbs down to create somewhat of a thick crust (make sure it's even). Refrigerate.

Use a hand-held mixer to blend the blocks of cream cheese first . Slowly add the sugar, eggs, sour cream and vanilla.

Separate about 4-5 tablespoons of cheesecake filling into different bowls so you can dye the batter to match the colors of the conversation heart candies.

I used about 3-4 drops of food dye. To make purple, combine red and blue dye. To make orange, combine red and yellow dye.

Pour water inside an aluminum tray. The water should cover halfway up the sides of the heart mold.
Place water filled aluminum tray (with heart mold) inside the oven.
Bake for 25 minutes.
Note: If you bake a large cheesecake with the leftover filling, bake for 45 minutes.

Once you pull out the heart mold, cool at room temperature for an hour, then place inside freezer for 2 hours.
Now here is where it gets tricky. As soon as you pull the mold out of the freezer, you should carefully pull the cheesecakes out of the mold, applying pressure to the bottom so the hearts and their crusts come out easily. My mistake was that I took them out of the freezer and left them standing for about half hour, which pretty much softened the crusts and disintegrated some of them.

Next you can use your Wilton Foodwriter to decorate the cheesecakes with flirty little Valentine's Day messages. My designs were more like carvings. Again, this happened because I didn't write on the cheesecakes when the surface was harder, immediately upon taking them out of the freezer.