Cheesecake Pops!

Cheesecake Pops!

This is the April 2008 Daring Bakers challenge - Cheesecake Pops from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor. A favorite website Rosa's Yummy Yums has posted the recipe.

It was a lot of fun to create, and were a total hit at work. You should totally make these for a party!!

The basic idea - bake a cheesecake without the crust in a water bath, chill out, roll into balls, freeze and coat in melted chocolate. I read that a lot of Daring Bakers were having difficulties baking the full recipe...the recipe says 35-45 minutes, and some people had to bake it for over an hour. I ended up making 1/2 the recipe and using a 9-inch cake pan.

This was my first time making a cheesecake with a water bath. Because I made 1/2 the recipe and I used a tall 9x3 pan, the batter only came up 1/3 of the pan. The recipe says to put the pan in a turkey roaster (or similar pan) and fill with boiling water 1/2 way up the side of the pan.

Um. I created a new island. The Cheesecake Island. I added too much water and my poor pan started to float in the vastness of boiling water.

What did I do? Did I mention it was BOILING water? I wasn't about to risk a burn (which I would soooo do to myself), so I just popped my new Hawaiian island into the stove.

In 35 minutes, I had a firm but not brown cheesecake! I can't imagine how long it would have baked if I used all 40 ounces of cream cheese to make the full recipe.

Cheesecake without the crust is chilled and rolled into little ball

After freezing, balls are covered in chocolate and dipped in toppings

Topping choices include: colored sprinkles, UCLA blue and gold sprinkles, and food processed gingersnap cookies

Cheesecake sitting in a bowl of rice! (I needed something to hold them up)