My adventure in cheesecake pops
Dec. 31st, 2010 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI always thought that cheesecake was hard to do. It is not. Cheesecake is ludicrously easy. Confident in my cheesecake-making ability, I decided to make cheesecake pops for New Year’s. In retrospect, this may have been a bit too ambitious.
Should you, however, wish to replicate my experience (or just point and laugh), I have documented today's adventure.
Warning #1: This will take two days. Don’t try to do it at the last minute. It can’t be done.
You will need:
Cheesecake:
Two bricks of cream cheese
½ cup of sugar
2 eggs
¼ cup of sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp almond extract
(The alert reader will recognize this recipe as the one for gay cheesecake, minus the food colouring. This is the best and easiest cheesecake recipe I have found. The cheesecake turns out near-perfect every time. Here is the sequel to the Gay Pride Cake:
It was delicious.)
Other stuff
Lollipop sticks
Wax paper
Chocolate (I used Merckens and some other stuff)
Graham crumbs
Things for rolling (I used crushed walnuts, sprinkles, and crushed mint chocolate. The latter did not work well)
Cream and butter in case your chocolate goes wrong
A double boiler
Room in both your fridge and freezer. Make sure of this before your hands get gooey.
Styrofoam and the ability to contravene the law of gravity
Music to distract you. I recommend the Swans' latest, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
Okay, now what do I do?
First, you make some cheesecake. The cream cheese should be room temperature. You can make that happen faster with a microwave. Blend it with the sugar, vanilla, and almond extract, then add the eggs one by one, then add sour cream. Bake in a pan at 325 for half an hour. You don’t even need to do a crust or use a springform or anything. Let it chill overnight.
Now you make some balls. I used a melon baller but you can probably get away with a spoon if you don’t have one. The cheesecake is hard to ball in the middle and around the sides. The rest balls really well. Then you roll each ball in graham crumbs and put it in a pan on waxed paper.
By now you are probably feeling pretty smug about your cheesecake-pop-making abilities, because these look like ACTUAL WEE BALLS and all roughly the same size and pretty. You can pop those suckers in the freezer for half an hour and enjoy that smug feeling, because you’re about to lose it.
Warning #2: Chocolate is harder than you think.
Okay, so I had never melted chocolate before and thought that you could maybe just put it on a stove and have it melt. Then you have gooey chocolate. This is not in fact true. The person who posted the guide to making cheesecake pops also claims that you can carefully nuke chocolate and add shortening to thin it.
This is also incorrect.
Apparently the trick to melting chocolate and not getting a complete disaster is to use a double boiler. This post would not be so self-deprecating had I done this, so here’s how to rescue it if you fuck it up.
Call your roommate down in a panic.
Add cream and butter and beat the shit out of the chocolate until most of the chunks go away. Then take the salvaged mixture and put it in the double boiler like you should have done in the first place.
Anyway, melt the chocolate. Prepare your little bowls full of things to roll on the pops.
Take the cheesecake balls out of the freezer. Dip a lollipop stick in the melted chocolate, then stick it in a cheesecake ball. If your chocolate is anything like mine, dipping it in the chocolate is not an option, and will result on your cheesecake ball falling off into the chocolate. So you should get a spoon and drizzle chocolate all over the ball and swirl it a bit.
When the ball is looking chocolatey, it’s time to get all Katamari Damacy with your sprinkles or nuts.
According to the original post, you can take Styrofoam and stick your pops in to keep them upright. This is also a bald-faced lie. Just put it back on the waxed paper and live with the balls not being perfectly round. You’re lucky if you can get them to stay on the lollipop sticks, honestly.
I lost at least a third of my balls to gravity anyway.
Warning #3: Unless you have a high sugar tolerance, do not eat your mistakes.
Yes, your mistakes are tasty, and it is sad to waste them. But if you’re anything like me, eating that many cheesecake pops will turn you into a horrifyingly hyperactive ferret-rhesus monkey hybrid thing. My heart started beating like mad and every emotion, including that of crushing baking failure, got turned up to 11. I know this sensation. It’s the sensation that comes right before you crash in a fit of post-sugar-high depression and freak the fuck out, knowing that there’s no way you’ll make it through New Year’s Eve without collapsing in a puddle of fatigue.
Then you put them back in the fridge and remind yourself that you are also supplying like three bottles of wine and people will forgive a lot when you are getting them drunk.
Warning #4: Yes, the double boiler is still hot.
The final result
How do they taste, though?
The mistakes were good. I’m saving my few successes for the party tonight, if that’s any incentive to come.
ETA: They were a hit, particularly with the Small People. Yay!
Should you, however, wish to replicate my experience (or just point and laugh), I have documented today's adventure.
Warning #1: This will take two days. Don’t try to do it at the last minute. It can’t be done.
You will need:
Cheesecake:
Two bricks of cream cheese
½ cup of sugar
2 eggs
¼ cup of sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
¼ tsp almond extract
(The alert reader will recognize this recipe as the one for gay cheesecake, minus the food colouring. This is the best and easiest cheesecake recipe I have found. The cheesecake turns out near-perfect every time. Here is the sequel to the Gay Pride Cake:
It was delicious.)
Other stuff
Lollipop sticks
Wax paper
Chocolate (I used Merckens and some other stuff)
Graham crumbs
Things for rolling (I used crushed walnuts, sprinkles, and crushed mint chocolate. The latter did not work well)
Cream and butter in case your chocolate goes wrong
A double boiler
Room in both your fridge and freezer. Make sure of this before your hands get gooey.
Styrofoam and the ability to contravene the law of gravity
Music to distract you. I recommend the Swans' latest, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky
Okay, now what do I do?
First, you make some cheesecake. The cream cheese should be room temperature. You can make that happen faster with a microwave. Blend it with the sugar, vanilla, and almond extract, then add the eggs one by one, then add sour cream. Bake in a pan at 325 for half an hour. You don’t even need to do a crust or use a springform or anything. Let it chill overnight.
Now you make some balls. I used a melon baller but you can probably get away with a spoon if you don’t have one. The cheesecake is hard to ball in the middle and around the sides. The rest balls really well. Then you roll each ball in graham crumbs and put it in a pan on waxed paper.
By now you are probably feeling pretty smug about your cheesecake-pop-making abilities, because these look like ACTUAL WEE BALLS and all roughly the same size and pretty. You can pop those suckers in the freezer for half an hour and enjoy that smug feeling, because you’re about to lose it.
Warning #2: Chocolate is harder than you think.
Okay, so I had never melted chocolate before and thought that you could maybe just put it on a stove and have it melt. Then you have gooey chocolate. This is not in fact true. The person who posted the guide to making cheesecake pops also claims that you can carefully nuke chocolate and add shortening to thin it.
This is also incorrect.
Apparently the trick to melting chocolate and not getting a complete disaster is to use a double boiler. This post would not be so self-deprecating had I done this, so here’s how to rescue it if you fuck it up.
Call your roommate down in a panic.
Add cream and butter and beat the shit out of the chocolate until most of the chunks go away. Then take the salvaged mixture and put it in the double boiler like you should have done in the first place.
Anyway, melt the chocolate. Prepare your little bowls full of things to roll on the pops.
Take the cheesecake balls out of the freezer. Dip a lollipop stick in the melted chocolate, then stick it in a cheesecake ball. If your chocolate is anything like mine, dipping it in the chocolate is not an option, and will result on your cheesecake ball falling off into the chocolate. So you should get a spoon and drizzle chocolate all over the ball and swirl it a bit.
When the ball is looking chocolatey, it’s time to get all Katamari Damacy with your sprinkles or nuts.
According to the original post, you can take Styrofoam and stick your pops in to keep them upright. This is also a bald-faced lie. Just put it back on the waxed paper and live with the balls not being perfectly round. You’re lucky if you can get them to stay on the lollipop sticks, honestly.
I lost at least a third of my balls to gravity anyway.
Warning #3: Unless you have a high sugar tolerance, do not eat your mistakes.
Yes, your mistakes are tasty, and it is sad to waste them. But if you’re anything like me, eating that many cheesecake pops will turn you into a horrifyingly hyperactive ferret-rhesus monkey hybrid thing. My heart started beating like mad and every emotion, including that of crushing baking failure, got turned up to 11. I know this sensation. It’s the sensation that comes right before you crash in a fit of post-sugar-high depression and freak the fuck out, knowing that there’s no way you’ll make it through New Year’s Eve without collapsing in a puddle of fatigue.
Then you put them back in the fridge and remind yourself that you are also supplying like three bottles of wine and people will forgive a lot when you are getting them drunk.
Warning #4: Yes, the double boiler is still hot.
The final result
How do they taste, though?
The mistakes were good. I’m saving my few successes for the party tonight, if that’s any incentive to come.
ETA: They were a hit, particularly with the Small People. Yay!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 09:16 pm (UTC)Also, if you have a really thick-bottomed pot, you can skip the double boiler.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-31 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 04:44 am (UTC)Also, is a double boiler an official appliance? I normally stick the chocolate in a plastic bowl over a pan of boiling water to melt it which works fine - unless you have chosen a bowl so crappy it melts or forget to take it off as soon as it's melted (if you let the water and pan cool it creates an amazing suction on the bowl, which can lead to highly messy hilarity later).
no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-02 06:02 pm (UTC)The big difference is that the bowl nestles perfectly in the pot, so you don't need to worry about it slipping. And the lid for the pot fits the bowl as well, though I've never wanted to cover anything I was heating in the double-boiler. Also, the bowl for the double boiler has handles, which makes it easier to remove it from the pot. None of this is essential, and I'd probably never have bought a posh double-boiler for myself, but it's really nice to have, now that I have it.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-01 09:47 am (UTC)I too was scared of cheesecake until I tried to make it one day and it was absurdly easy. I suspect having halfway decent beaters may be the key.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-02 02:51 pm (UTC)