April Daring Baker's Challenge

This month's challenge is Cheesecake Pops, and the hosts are Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell. My verdict on this month's challenge: Very fun to make, got to try out a few cool and new things, but I can't say I like the end product.

Firstly, I'm not a fan of cheesecakes [I can almost hear the gasp of horror of all readers]. They are wayy too rich for my taste, and I just don't like them. This recipe produced an extra creamy cheesecake, which of course means that I extra dislike them. But cream cheese is one of the most luscious ingredients to work with, and its a delight to bake with. Just the look of it feels sensuous =)

Secondly, its a frozen dessert, which means I can't bring it anywhere more than 5 mins away, which means that I'm stuck with a whole batch of cheesecake. Which I dislike. You can see the problem, even if my Mom and sis do like cheesecake better than I.

Now, on to the cool stuff. I have always had a kind of phobia for shortening, probably because they look like wax, but people tell me its actually food. Not to mention all that stuff about transfats, which is just scary. However, for this challenge, I did some research on shortening, and found that they now have transfats-free shortening! So I plucked up my courage and bought a whole packet of shortening, even if its not completely necessary and I only needed a tablespoon [I halved the recipe]. And it turned out to be fine. No weird oily taste, as some bakers worried about, though it did felt a little heavier than pure chocolate when I licked up the leftover dipping.

Then, my favorite part, the actual dipping! Because the cheesecake balls were frozen, the chocolate hardened over the pops immediately, which was amazing to see and oh so fun to play with. However, when I tried dipping with some room temperature oreos with the leftover chocolate, I found that the shortening really didn't help that much with the setting =(

I couldn't find lollipop sticks, so I bought lollipops and knocked off the sweets with a hammer. Very fun, did a lot of good for my stress level.

My cheesecake, fresh out of the oven. Good thing I used a disposable baking dish, would have been a nightmare to wash all the cheese off.

When I tried to make balls out of the frozen cheesecake with a melon scooper, the cheesecake clumped together and refused to scoop nicely; so I resorted to forming the balls with two spoons, which turned out to be rather fun as well.

The balls, nicely formed, with their lollipop sticks. Is it just me, or did anyone else noticed that the cheesecake doesn't freeze very well? It never got very firm, and stayed kinda soft, even when I left it overnight in the freezer.

The final product, sans wrapper. Looks darling, doesn't it?

Click here to check out how other daring bakers made their cheesecake pops!