Strawberry Cheesecake Pops

A little Valentine's treat for your sweetie.  I actually made these for my friend Cindy. She was in need of a little cheering up and was craving cake.  And my friend Kate wanted me to make them just because, so I figured this would be win-win.

Cake pops are cropping up all over, but my inspiration for them comes from Bakerella and her beautiful blog.  She has infinite more patience than I do for the decorating, but the standard cake pops dipped in chocolate are super delicious.  And even though this was my first time, I didn't follow Bakerella's recipe exactly.  The cream cheese worked great and definitely made for a cheesecake style consistency.  But I'll try these Bakerella's way soon and let you know how they turn out.


Strawberry Cheesecake Pops

Ingredients

1 packaged strawberry cake mix
vegetable oil, as called for on box
water, as called for on box
eggs, as called for on box
8 oz cream cheese, softened
milk chocolate for dipping
white chocolate for dipping
sprinkles for garnish (not pictured)

Prepare cake mix according to instructions on box. 

Bake in any size pan or pans you like. 

After baking, allow cake to cool completely and remove from pan.  This is yet another reason why I don't do cakes.  I can never get them out of the pan in one piece.

But in this case, it doesn't matter because we're going to crumble it up anyway.  Because I really wanted the light pink to be the color of the cake pops, I trimmed off the browned edges and crumbled the rest of the interior of the cake into the food processor.

Cut up cream cheese and add to crumbled cake in food processor.  Pulse until crumbs and cream cheese combine.  You should end up with a uniform ball of yumminess.

Now the fun part.  Roll the dough into roughly one inch balls.  I used a small cookie scoop and then formed the balls with my hands. 

Place balls on a tray or pan and repeat until full or you fun out of dough.  Then put the tray or pan in the freezer for about an hour or until the balls are firm.

Melt the chocolate and stir until smooth.  Melt the chocolate in batches as you dip the pops.  And use a narrow container. The little bowls I used were too shallow, so I had to work to get the chocolate up to the stick.

Place a lollipop stick in each of the cake balls.  Push it through as far as you can--you don't want the ball falling off in the chocolate, and as the balls come back to room temperature, they'll be more likely to fall off.

Take one pop and roll it in the chocolate, trying to get a thick coating all the way around.  Keep turn the stick and keep the pop against the edge of the container to finish it off.  Dip quickly in sprinkles.

Here's where the problem was--I didn't have a place to put them after I dipped them.  So I had to put them top down, like caramel apples.  I put them in a container lined with waxed paper and it turned out fine.  And the ones dipped in sprinkles camouflaged the flattened tops.  Dave was working on the styrofoam ball I bought for presenting the pops (he pre-poked holes in it for the lollipop sticks because it was too thick). In hindsight, I would have bought another piece of foam--like a brick or something--to use after I dipped the pops. 

After I dipped them and placed them on the waxed paper, I did chill them for about 15 minutes so the chocolate could set.  You could also forgo the sticks and just have cake balls. Use two spoons or two forks to ensure even coating of chocolate and place on waxed paper to set.

Makes 40 pops.

Happy Baking,
The Cookie Princess