Cheesecake Pops – Daring Bakers April o8

Hosting this month’s event is Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah from Taste and Tell. Thank you Elle and Deborah for hosting D.B. this month.

They selected a fun recipe for the Daring Bakers of ‘Cheesecake Pops’, from a tempting little book called Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor. They both explained that they wanted to pick something that each Daring Baker could put their own stamp onto. They both kindly gave a little leeway of adding flavouring to the cheesecake and the chocolate dipping could be of any kind of chocolate with the addition of sprinkles and ribbons if we so wished. The shapes of the cheesecake pops could be of any kind as long as they weighed 50g (2 oz) each. There are various techniques and stages being used in making these pops, making and baking a cheesecake in a bain-marie, forming the cheesecake into desired shapes, tempering chocolate and dipping chocolate and working with it before it freezes to add sprinkles on.

The challenge for me was finding little lollipop sticks and I ended up having to use plastic straws because the wooden lollipop sticks were way too large to use that I had brought. Not having little children anymore to eat my cheesecake pops I halved the whole recipe without any problems. How do halve an egg I hear you say for the cheesecake, I simply lightly whisked an egg into a cup and only used half. I made approximately 22 cheesecake pops in all with doing this.

The cheesecake mixture I made in my Kitchen Aid mixer and poured this into a deep enough metal baking tin and placed into a bain-marie to bake in the oven. The cheesecake itself is very creamy, light and defiantly delicious. It was then left to cool and wrapped overnight in cling film and placed into the fridge to work into 50g (2 oz) shapes the next day. I decided to keep the shapes round and placed my straws into the centre ready to freeze for a couple of hours before covering with the tempered chocolate and sprinkles. Once the chocolate was coating the cheesecake shapes I had to work quickly to add the sprinkles before the chocolate set to a hard crackle.

I truly enjoyed making my cheesecake pops and with using various techniques in each step it was fun, fun, fun!! If I am being honest on taste here, I am sure young children will adore them and find them fun to eat however, I really enjoyed the cheesecake element but adding the chocolate coating, I did find them quite sickly to eat after one bite.