Its that time again… daring bakers time that is! This time it was cute little cheesecake bites! When I first saw what this month’s challenge , I was thrilled because I’ve never made anything like this and hubby LOVES cheesecake. The downside of this month’s challenge… I don’t particularly care for cheesecake much. Although, maybe that’s actually the upside since I am trying to lose a little weight 
Due to the fact that I’m not a huge cheesecake fan, it makes it a little difficult for me to rate this recipe. Hubby isn’t a very good judge either - when he eats cheesecake (which it is his favorite dessert) he likes it PLAIN. No fruit, no chocolate, no caramel, no nuts… just cheesecake. With that in mind, I wouldn’t say its one of the best desserts I’ve had but it was pretty good. I of course tried the cheesecake recipe before making it into pops and it was allright. I certainly prefer my usual recipe over this one. But once they had the chocolate on them and were chilled… they were quite good! Instead of using pure chocolate, I bought dipping chocolate that hardens nicely (the same stuff I use to make strawberries). The result: when you bite into a cheesecake pop the first thought was a chocolate dipped haagen-daaz bar… then the cheesecake flavor hit you. Wonderful!
The recipe said you’d get about 30-40 pops, but I ended up with around 60, but this was probably due to the fact that I didn’t have the right size scoop so I had rolled balls of cheesecake to be what I thought was about 2 ounces but I must have been off. Although, I can’t imagine making them any larger for the size of the lollipop sticks. Next time, I’d use a scoop thought. The result of Hand rolling the balls was a slightly rough texture which didn’t make them as pretty as I would have liked.
I wish I’d had more time on my hands to try a larger variety of flavor combinations for dipping. There are endless possibilites - be sure to pop over to the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see what everyone else did this month! And a special thanks to Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell for hosting this month! It was a fun challenge!
Cheesecake Pops
Makes 30 – 40 Pops
5 8-oz. packages cream cheese at room temperature
2 cups sugar
¼ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ cup heavy cream
Boiling water as needed
Thirty to forty 8-inch lollipop sticks
1 pound chocolate, finely chopped – you can use all one kind or half and half of dark, milk, or white
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
Assorted decorations such as chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees) - Optional
Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil. In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream. Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes.
Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight. When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.
When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety. Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.
Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.
Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.
Source: Adapted from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor
