My First Daring Baker Challenge!

I had hoped to have this ready a few days earlier, but house hunting has been taking up most of our time here. This was my first Daring Bakers challenge. I have spent the last several months admiring several different bloggers' monthly creations and decided it was time to join. It took me a couple of days to complete this challenge. I had never made a cheesecake before, but I hoped it wouldn't be too hard. It was fun getting to use my new mixer - one of many new kitchen toys from our wedding registry. The cheesecake took a bit longer than the recipe said but turned out just fine with a golden brown top and cracked in only a few places. I left it in the fridge for a day or two.

The next step seemed more challenging. I really wasn't sure how big two ounces would turn out. I decided to use an ice cream scoop that was approximately two ounces. It was definitely a messy endeavor, but I finally got them scooped out. I think the cheesecake balls could have been much smaller, but I didn't really have time to experiment. After leaving them in the freezer for overnight, I was ready for the final step. I used a Pyrex bowl on top of a saucepan to melt the chocolate. It was a little difficult dipping the cheesecake balls and covering most of them with chocolate. After that I used nonpareils and other chocolate sprinkles to decorate them. (I had been hoping to document this all with photographs, but our camera has decided to hide somewhere in our apartment.)

After all of this effort, the cheesecake pops sat in the fridge for another day or so. I had been letting some friends know that I had something interesting for them to try, so everyone was eagerly awaiting the results. The overwhelming feeling was that these were simply delicious. Rich, but delicious. We did have some trouble with the pops starting to fall off of the lollipop sticks, but that could probably be prevented with smaller cheesecake balls.

I'm looking forward to the next challenge. I'm hoping to have my own blog up and running before too long, but we'll have to wait and see.

-Jennifer E