Daring Cheesecake!

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge is a recipe for mini cheesecake pops! THese looked and sounded so fun; I was really excited to try them with a few recipes. I made this recipe so it was ready to serve alongside birthday cake on my mom's birthday. I changed the recipe slightly, substituting the flour for cornstarch since my sister is allergic to wheat. There is a 2:1 flour:cornstarch ratio for that substitution, and it was not really an obvious change. The flour is really just there to provide some structure.

I doubled the recipe because I wanted to try a variety of flavors: I made half of my popsicles following the recipe exactly (other than the flour) and added some vanilla beans for an extra pop of vanilla. I dipped them in dark chocolate, which was melted with a little shortening, and I added some cinnamon and cayenne to make it a bit of a mexican chocolate - I really liked that layer in the flavor. These were decorated in colored stars.

With the other half, I made half coconut using a tsp of coconut extract, and dipping the chocolate in toasted coconut flakes. The remaining part was flavored with a tsp of lemon extract. These were dipped in multicolored sugar.

The pops were really good but I think I liked them better in theory than in practice. They were a bit too rich for me, and for ryan. I think I prefer cheekacake, straight up. Too much going on with these. But, dont take my word for it: my family enjoyed them, and the leftovers did not last long at Ryan's work!

Overall the recipe was a success. It took a bit longer to set in the oven, about 55 minutes. I just pulled them when they were set in the center. They were somewhat of a pain to roll - the cheesecake softened very quicklywhen I was rolling them and my hands got gooey quickly, I found them hard to get into uniform balls. The biggest difficulty I encountered was freezer space. After rolling the balls and sticking in the sticks the pops need to freeze in the freezer for a few hours. They defintely took longer for me for them to get really hard, and it was very hard to find the space in a standard side by side fridge/freezer, especially when the freezer is packed ;) I had to do small batches in the freezer which made the process longer than it should have been.

Had I had a second freezer or just less junk in mine, it would have been much easier.

Check out the recipe here at Taste and Tell, one of our esteemed hosts for this round!