As promised....Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Cheesecake Balls Tutorial

Well, these "balls" ended up being hearts but we will get to that...

Here is the tutorial I promised! I used this peanut butter cheesecake recipe from allrecipes.com and I used a recipe from Crummb for the chocolate coating. Thanks to them for their contributions...I also have to thank my husband for his assistance in a few steps and for giving me a few tips or suggestions to pass on to you :) I will say that any cheesecake will work. If you don't want to make a homemade cheesecake you could use a store bought cheesecake.

Let me also warn you that I took a bazillion pictures so it will be a rather lengthy tutorial but I am a visual person and I hope the pictures will help.


Cheesecake Ingredients:

 

3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese

3/4 cup peanut butter - preferably creamy

1 cup white sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

1/4 cup half-and-half cream

Coating Ingredients: 

50 lollipop sticks

1 pound eating chocolate (dark, milk or white)

2 tablespoons shortening

Steps: 

I always start with room temperature ingredients for your cheesecake. This is supposed to help with cracking and I believe it does. Also remember to not over-beat your ingredients. 

 

While I am waiting on these ingredients to come to room temperature I prepare the pan. Now because I am not making the normal cheesecake, I am doing this a little differently than the standard cheesecake. 

First, you need a pan (I used this because I don't use these pans near enough, they were the pans from my wedding cake). I would suggest you don't use a spring-form pan because the filling may spill out the bottom since there is no crust. I also use parchment paper.

  

Then you draw around the pan with a pen and cut about a quarter inch inside that line. 

Next spray the pan and then lay the parchment paper in the pan and spray the top of the parchment paper. I also spray my measuring cup that I plan on measuring the peanut butter in so that I can actually get it out of the cup.

Once the ingredients are room temperature, you can start mixing. Well, actually we need to get the oven ready. Since my pan won't fit inside any other pan that I have I opted to just fill a pan and put it on the rack below the rack the cheesecake will cook on. I fill the pan with water then preheat the oven to 375F, that way the water is already hot. {Water 'bath' is not required, but is suggested. If you can't do it, don't stress about it!}

Ok, back to the mixing of ingredients. I start by mixing the cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar, and flour, and vanilla.

The recipe says to mix until smooth. I mixed until mine looked like this.

Then add your eggs all at one time. Beating on low speed until combined.

Once it is combined, slowly mix in the heavy cream. Supposedly you should be able to stir it in but I just went slow with my mixer after giving up trying to hand stir.

 

The lumps are peanuts because I only had crunchy peanut butter.

Pour into your pan and place in the oven.

Patiently wait around 40 minutes or until the cheesecake is a light brown. The center of the cheesecake should not be set. How can I tell you ask? Gently shake the oven rack and if the center moves a little you are good. Then I turn off the oven and crack the door and let the cheesecake cool.

Once it is cooled off, you can move it to the refrigerator to chill for at least 3 hours. So, what did I do while I was waiting? Well, I talk the hubby into turning some popsicle sticks into the right sized sticks. I took on shot of this and then he moved the scissors into the picture by reading my mind and knowing they needed to be there. Gotta love him!

So, when you cheesecake is finally cool.... we had to figure out how to get rid of the rubbery coating on the top. My husband seems to think that in order to not have to deal with this that you should place parchment paper on top of the cheesecake before you bake it. If you try this, let me know how it works.
We ended up scraping the cheesecake with a fork until we scraped as much of the top off as possible.

Next, I started to think out load of how to do the next step of forming the balls. Well, my husband had the idea of using my small heart cookie cutter I have (I collect cookie cutters by the way). So, I cut out the hearts that came out with the cookie cutter and placed them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Wax paper would be fine as well.

Eric put the popsicle sticks in the hearts as I was cutting them out.

 

We also took the remaining cheesecake minus the edges and rolled it up to make actual cheesecake balls. 

We placed them in the freezer overnight because it was late by then. I would want them to be pretty frozen before I went on to the coating part.

Coating:
I started by melting 1/2 a bag of white chocolate chips in a coffee mug and 1/2 a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips in another mug. I microwaved for 30 seconds then stirred and repeated the process until it was completely melted.

 Next, I added a tablespoon of shortening to each mug. I had to microwave one of them a little after adding the shortening until it was smooth.

 

Next, coat the hearts/balls with favored chocolate and set on wax paper or parchment paper. The way I kept the hearts/balls cold was by putting a bowl in the freezer, putting some balls in the bowl and working until they start to get warm. 

Use your imagination and add sprinkles or leave plain. Then refrigerate.

These are the finished hearts and balls. They were yummy but I don't care for the peanut butter cheesecake so in the future, I will stick with the plain cheesecake.