Stick to the challenge!

My name is Castrinator, Pro Castrinator. Again I waited to the last hours to fulfill my Daring Bakers Challenge April. This time I exactly knew why....

We had to do crafts. Cream cheese crafts. Fickle on a popsickle. Twirl and Swirl. Decorate your Dairy. Yup, my favourite pastime, plus the fact that I'm not so sure on the cheese cakes part.

Come on, what would you think when a recipe involves a kilo of cream cheese, a couple of eggs and nothing else? Oh yes that and a pound of chocolate?
Run for the hills and call Weight Watchers from your mobile while you're at it. Which would be a fine training since you're going to need both the exercise and the WW after completing and eating).

As of today, posting day 4 o'clock my freezer burps with a large amount of chocolate covered cream cheese balls. I feared baking the cheese cake, I feared rolling the balls, I feared covering them in chocolate. The hardest part? Finding a place for them to set and making the pictures. As often is the case, when I am finished I am so happy that taking the pics is like an afterthought...


I followed the recipe exactly as it was written and it turned out that halving the recipe and accidently setting the oven a tad too high (350F instead of 325) made a perfect cheese cake, no cracks, all set in 35 minutes. I tried cutting the cake with a small cookie cutter, tried rolling balls with cold damp hands, both were do-able but very messy! Freezing them for a couple of hours made them hard enough to enrobe in chocolate (tempered with a spoonful of margarine) but I found that I had to work in small batches, the cake was defrosting fast!

The challenge this month was brought to us by yet another illustrous duo: Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell, you can find the recipe there. Thank you girls for choosing another new to me exercise! I bet you want to see all the other cheesecake crafts, click on the The Daring Bakers Blogroll on the right hand side and let your eyes go pop!


The recipe comes from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey, by Jill O’Connor. I halved the recipe and it made me close to 30 -Dutch- walnut sized balls. Knowing the kids and their friends (and their Dad ;-)) would love their looks, I used almost every colour and shape sprinkle in the house. There are still plain cheesecake balls in the freezer, those will pursue a career as a dessert topping. Can't give you a verdict yet, we all tried one but they were fairly soft, and the richness was almost overpowering. I wonder what they will be like when they are firm.