Frozen Strawberry Lemonade Cheesecake Pops

These strawberry lemonade cheesecake pops just scream summer to me! To make these, you'll need an Instant Pot and a few speciality tools (zester, double broiler). While these are a bit of a project, they are WORTH IT. They're SO good and taste like they came from a professional shop. Let me show you how to make the best summer treat I've ever made!

This recipe is adapted from Amy & Jacky's Cheesecake #17 and is unique because you use a pressure cooker to "bake" the cheesecake. In reality you are steaming the cheesecake. I've made a few slight changes to the recipe and I would highly recommend you check out their original post as it has a lot more details than what I will put on this Instructable (they also give you a lot of options depending on what you want out of your cheesecake).

You will need:

Spring form pans

Double broiler (or pan and glass bowl)

Silicone or plastic whisk

Food Processor

Instant Pot

Zester

Popsicle sticks

Treat baggies

Candy Melts

Fine mesh strainer (optional)

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To make the lemon curd, you will need:

1 egg

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1/3 cup of sugar

3 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into chunks

2 pinches of salt

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To make the cheesecake crust, you will need:

1/4 cup of flour

5 graham cracker sheets

6 Lemonades Girl Scout cookies

2 tablespoons brown sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

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For the cheesecake filling, you will need:

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2/3 cup white sugar

2 pinches of salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tablespoon vanilla

16 oz of cream cheese

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For the crumble topping, you will need:

12 lemon Oreos

Lemon Jello

Strawberry Jello

~1/2 cup of whipped cream

To make the lemon curd, you will need:

1 egg

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1/3 cup of sugar

3 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into chunks

2 pinches of salt

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I've only made lemon curd once before and it was a long time ago. I remember it being easy enough to make and thought it would be the perfect "glue" in this recipe to hold the topping onto the cheesecake.

To make lemon curd, you only need a few ingredients: 1 egg, 1 big lemon, some sugar, salt and a few tablespoons of butter. You'll also need a few speciality tools including a zester (or fine grater), a double broiler (or a pot and a glass bowl to sit on top of the pot), a juicer (optional, I usually just use a fork) and a plastic or silicone coated whisk. You'll want to avoid metal in this recipe as the acidity from the lemon juice can react with metal and give the lemon curd a metallic taste. Sticking with glass bowls and plastic or silicone coated whisks will help prevent that.

Start by zesting and juicing one large lemon. You will need 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon zest and 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice. I had a big lemon so was able to get this all from one lemon. If you only have smaller lemons, you may need 2 to get enough zest and juice.

Next, boil a few inches of water in a pot and place a heat resistant glass bowl on top (or use a double broiler if you have one). Add all the ingredients to the bowl except the butter. Stir constantly with the whisk and keep whisking over medium heat until the curd starts to thicken. This can take 10 minutes or longer. I cooked mine for about 15 minutes. It appeared to be thickening so I took it off the heat and added in the butter. The heat from the curd will melt the butter. Pour the curd into a container and cover with plastic wrap. Make sure the wrap touches the surface of the curd to help prevent a skin from forming on the curd. Refrigerate overnight.

The next morning when I went to pull the lemon curd out of the fridge, I noticed that it wasn't as thick as I had thought it would be. I decided to put it back in the double broiler set up and cook it a little longer. After another 15 minutes of cooking, it finally thickened up. I also decided to pour it through a fine mesh to help remove the lemon zest. If you don't mind the zest in your curd, you can skip this step. The end result of my lemon curd was a really thick, really tart smooth lemon curd. It might not have come out exactly right, but it sure tastes great and worked perfectly for this recipe.

To make the cheesecake crust, you will need:

1/4 cup of flour

5 graham cracker sheets

6 Lemonades Girl Scout cookies

2 tablespoons brown sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

pinch of salt

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To make the cheesecake crust, you'll need graham crackers, brown sugar, unsalted butter, a little bit of salt and my secret ingredient, Lemonades Girl Scout Cookies! Lemonades are shortbread cookies with a lemon icing on the bottom and you can get them from your friendly neighborhood Girl Scout during cookie season. Note: some areas do not have this cookie because there are two bakers, but you can usually find someone to ship them to you if you are interested! Lemonades have a nice light lemon flavor and they are one of my favorite Girl Scout cookies! If you can't get your hands on the Lemonades, you can use 10 sheets of graham crackers instead.

Place all the dry ingredients in a food processor and give it a good whirl. When everything is down to a fine crumb, add in the melted butter and spin it around again until the crumbs are moistened and hold together like play sand. Dump the crumbs into a springform pan and use something flat to pack it all down. I split this recipe into two cheesecakes to keep my pops a little thinner, so I split the crumbs into two pans.

Bake the crusts in the pans for 15 minutes in a 325 degree F oven. This will make the crusts firm and make a great base for our pops.

For the cheesecake filling, you will need:

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2/3 cup white sugar

2 pinches of salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1 tablespoon vanilla

16 oz of cream cheese

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The key to this cheesecake is to NOT whip a bunch of air into it. You want to make a pretty dense cheesecake for these pops so they can be on a stick. With that in mind, make sure you only just incorporate the ingredients and mix as little as possible. Using a hand mixer instead of a stand mixer is helpful, as a stand mixer is a little more powerful and can whip more air in than desired.

It is also important that the sour cream, eggs and cream cheese are all at room temperature before you start. This will help make for a silky smooth cheesecake!

Once all your ingredients are at room temperature, start by combining the cornstarch, sugar and salt in a bowl.

Beat the cream cheese lightly. Add half the sugar mixture and beat to combine. Add the second half of the sugar mixture and beat to combine. Add in sour cream and combine. Then add in the vanilla and eggs and beat briefly to combine. Make sure to scrape down the sides between each ingredient addition. Use a rubber scraper to fold over and make sure everything is well combined.

Pour the batter equally between the two pans and tap the pans hard on the counter a few times to get any air bubbles out. Some air bubbles will remain and that's perfectly ok. While one cake is baking, I put the second one in the fridge.

Now it is time to pressure cook the cheesecakes! I have an InstantPot 6 qt Duo, but I'm pretty sure you can do this in any pressure cooker you might have.

Add one cup of water to the Instant Pot and then add in the trivet. I have a silicone Instant Pot Sling that you can put under your pan to lift out the pan which makes the whole process so MUCH easier. If you don't have a sling, take about 16 inches of aluminum foil and fold it into a 1 inch strip. Place the pan on the strip and then use the strip to lower your pan into your pot. Fold over the edges of the foil so it don't touch your cheesecake.

Put on the lid and select pressure cook for 26 minutes. Let the pot do a full natural release, which takes about 10 minutes.

When one cake is done cooking, carefully take the cake out and cool on a wire rack. Add the next next cake in and repeat the cooking process for the second cake.

After about 10 minutes of cooling, run a knife along the edges of the cake pan and release the spring form pan. Take the rim off the pan and let the cake cool further before trying to take it off the bottom pan. When fully cooled, use a spatula to gently push the cake off the bottom pan.

When the cake is cooled, store it overnight in the fridge to help make sure it firms up. If you don't have a cake container to put the cake in, use a larger tupperware and put the cheesecake on the lid and store it upside down.

For the crumble topping, you will need:

15 lemon Oreos

Lemon Jello

Strawberry Jello

~1/2 cup of whipped cream

Put 15 Lemon Filled Oreos in a food processor and grind them up until a pebbly crumb is achieved. Separate out a small portion of the crumbs and sprinkle with some lemon Jello powder. Add a tablespoon of whipped cream and mix together.

For the remaining crumbs, sprinkle with strawberry Jello and mix. Add in a few tablespoons of whipped cream and crumble up again. Separate the strawberry crumbs in about half and add more strawberry Jello to half of the crumbs to give it a darker pink color. It is really subjective how much Jello powder you add, I went strictly of color. There was a lot of Jello left over after this project!

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes to dry out the crumbs. After it cools, recrumble the crumbs and mix all three colors together lightly. Don't mix too much as you might lose some of the lighter colored crumbles if you do.

The following day, spread the tops of the cheesecakes with a thin layer of lemon curd.

Add the crumble topping to each cheesecake and press the crumbs gently into the lemon curd. There was a lot of leftover crumble which would go great on other desserts! Make sure to keep the leftover crumble refrigerated.

Next, cut the cheesecakes into wedges. I chose to cut mine into 6 pieces per cheesecake. Melt candy melts in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time. Stir between each stretch in the microwave to prevent burning. The color really doesn't matter, I just happened to have pink on hand. Dip the tops of your popsicle sticks in the melted chocolate and then push into each pop. Make sure to insert the stick closer to the crust end of the cheesecake. The melted chocolate will help the stick stay in place.

I had a little extra chocolate after I was done putting in all my sticks so I drizzled the tops of the cheesecake pops with it. You can skip this step if you don't have extra candy melts (or get even more creative if you want!). Place all the pops on a cookie sheet and freeze them in the freezer for at least an hour.

When all your pops are ready, wrap them in treat bags and store in the freezer!

If this all seems like a little too much, you could easily start with premade cheesecake, store bought lemon curd and just make up the crumble topping!

I hope you enjoyed this Instructable and will give them a try!