April has been a crazy month for me. I’ve been in Vancouver, Edmonton and New Orleans as well as carried a full workload of creative projects at work. As a result, I really didn’t feel like heading into the kitchen for the Daring Baker’s Challenge this time around.
Don’t get me wrong, I had nothing against the recipe or the group but I just didn’t feel like doing anything extra with my one free Saturday at home this month. But, since being part of a group occasionally requires effort and compromise, I pulled out my mixer, found my sprinkles and got baking. After all, the recipe for cheesecake pops, chosen by Elle and Deborah, is simple and well written by Jill O’Connor. (Regular readers will recognize Jill’s name as one of the authors I showcased in December during Book Week and this month’s DB recipe is from her book Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey that I recommended in that post.)
So, I entered the kitchen feeling optimistic that things would go well. Unfortunately, when I unwrapped my room temperature cream cheese, one of the bricks was strange: curdy and sour smelling. Definitely not worthy of use. So, I tossed the bad brick into the compost bucket, got out my calculator and scaled the recipe down by 20%. To compensate for using a smaller volume of batter, I used a 9-inch (23-cm) cake pan (one of the same ones I used for last month’s challenge). I was a little worried that my math might not lead to a usable cheesecake but fortunately my calculations worked out and it all turned out well.
To compound my good luck, an hour after I finished making the lollies and was wondering what in the world I would do with them (we aren’t big on cheesecake at our house), the phone rang. It was a friend who I was able to persuade to come over the next day with her husband and sweet tooth daughter for a casual Sunday meal. My young friend loved the lollies so much that she took home the leftovers to share with her grandmother and asked for the recipe so that she can make them for her own birthday party. Perfecto!
