Sheryl Lee: Strawberry & Rhubarb “Cheesecake” Popsicles

Things are heating up in the kitchen AND in Mamamia’s Food Blogger Idol competition.

After receiving hundreds of amazing and delicious entries from some extremely talented home cooks, and after deliberating for many hours, we managed to narrow the list down to the five. And now? It’s time to vote.

So let’s meet our finalists…

I come from a long line of dessert eaters.

We’re chocolate after dinner people. Mid-morning pastry munchers. Midnight cookie snitchers.

We crave a lick of something sweet at the end of every savoury mouthful, a nibble of naughtiness before bed.

It can’t be helped.

My fiancée, bless his tastebuds, is not a dessert eater and finds himself quite aghast at my daily compulsions to end a meal with “just a little bit of something else!”

“If you’re still hungry, there’s more dinner”, he’ll say, quite reasonably.

“But I’m not hungry for dinner. I’m hungry for ice-cream”, I’ll reply, quite unreasonably.

Particularly as we’ve no ice-cream in the apartment and obtaining it will likely involve me changing out of my pyjamas, getting into the car and staring wide-eyed into the chest freezer of our local convenience store whilst said fiancée looks on in disbelief.

And so, a compromise.

Turns out, I don’t really need the chocolate pop tart with vanilla ice-cream after demolishing a roast dinner. My tastebuds just like a change of scenery.

I’ve switched post dinner brownies for a handful of roasted nuts dusted in cocoa powder and cinnamon. Substituted apple pie for apples. Hidden my growing chocolate stash in the vegetable compartment under the kale so I see the leafy greens before the metallic silver wrappers.

Oh, and I’ve made myself a batch of what might just be one of the easiest two-ingredient recipes ever to cross my mind. It’s not strictly cheesecake ice-cream on a stick, but the flavours and textures sure do come close.

Creamy and just a little bit tangy. A mellow biscuit crunch and a swirl of pink fruit. High on the satisfaction scale, low on effort and only a couple of spoons and a bowl to clean up at the end. Best of all, it’s dessert without the guilt factor (particularly as it’s made with my favourite flavour from the Rachel’s Gourmet Low Fat Yoghurt Range).

You could use any of the flavours for this recipe, or mix them up for a medley of any-time treats.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a kale-filled lunch to make so I can get to the bottom of my crisper.

 

Strawberry & Rhubarb “Cheesecake” Popsicles

You’re going to need:

2 butter cookies

It would also be useful to have:

Popsicle mould

Wooden popsicle sticks

Here’s how we do it:

1. Open up your tub of yoghurt and do your very best not to eat it all.

2.  Carefully scoop out as much of the plain yoghurt from the top of the tub as you can and pop it in a bowl. Try not to get any of the lush strawberry and rhubarb compote mixed in to this lot of yoghurt – that’s for later.

3.  Once you’ve separated our as much plain yoghurt as you can, mix up whatever is left in the tub so you get a beautiful pink fruit and yoghurt mixture.

5.  It’s assembly time! Plop a bit of the plain yoghurt into the bottom of a popsicle mould. Plop a bit of the pink yoghurt on top and then sprinkle some cookie crumbs on top of that. Give it a good tap on the table to break up any air bubbles and then repeat the layers until you reach the top of the mould.

6.  Repeat the layering process for each popsicle mould until you run out of stuff.

7.   Stick some wooden sticks in the top of each mould and put the lot in the freezer for at least three hours before unmoulding. Sprinkle some extra crushed cookies on top for that cheesecakey flavour. Divine!

If you would like to vote for Sheryl to be Mamamia’s new Food Blogger, you can vote by clicking HERE.