Feature Dessert: Orange Blueberry Cheesecake Dessert Shooter

Dessert shooters are one of my favorite things to make. You can turn almost any dessert into a shooter, and they instantly become more fun to eat! I might have to apply this theory to the savory side with my four year old twins, maybe that would take the hassle out of dinnertime! Hmmmm… ok back to dessert!

The inspiration…

This week, I had a few of my longtime Pampered Chef family from North Carolina stopping by, and I was excited to be design a dessert for them! I wanted something light and refreshing that wouldn’t put them in a sugar coma since they still had a four hour drive left. I also have a plethora of frozen blueberries in my freezer just begging to be used, so I designed this shooter around them! I love combining orange with blueberry so I transformed my favorite lemon cake to orange to use as the base. The rolled orange lace cookie reinforces the sweet citrus flavor while adding height, texture, and dimension to the overall appearance.

The assembly…

The foundation of this shooter starts with crumbles of my Citrus Sponge Cake. You can break it up by hand, or in the food processor, either works just fine. I crumble up my shooter base to ensure that you get a little cake and mousse in each bite. If you’d like to change the texture on the cake a bit, you can crumble it, then toast it in a 350 degree oven for a few minutes. I will help bring out the orange flavor a bit more, and also give you a little more pronounced texture to the cake crumbles.

Let’s talk uniformity. First, I weigh each component going into the cup with my scale. I had 5.5 ounce juice glass, so each shooter got 35 grams of cake. That may sound tedious, but it will make the overall appearance even more impressive when they all are identical, and it helps keep the ratio of cake to mousse consistent. The second thing I do is use my Pampered Chef Tart Shaper and gently press down to compress the cake. You don’t want to press too hard because it becomes too difficult to dig in to – the shooter should be easy to eat! This step is mostly to make a nice flat surface and straight line to start the next layer.

Once the layers are flattened, I spoon in the Blueberry Cheesecake Mousse. You can do this step right after you make it, or after it’s been chilled. I used the spoon to work out all the air bubbles, and filled it all the way to the top. Each shooter got a solid 85 grams of blueberry goodness. If you don’t plan to fill them all the way to the top, I would recommend piping the mousse in, so that the empty space at the top edge stays clean. That will be hard to control scooping it in with a spoon.

If your tops are overflowing like mine, just take the flat edge of a butter knife and run it over the top, scraping off the excess back into the mousse bowl. Clean in between each scrape, then run a paper towel around the outside if you had any drips. Now you have a very clean looking shooter, ready for garnish!

I refrigerated these until my guests arrived, and then added the Orange Lace Cookie, so that it stayed nice and crisp. You can use the cookie to scoop the mousse with, or eat it on it’s own, either way, it’s a nice orange accent to the blueberry mousse!

You can use any juice glass, or even wine or martini glasses to make these shooters. They are essentially fancy trifles, which means you can also super size them, and instead of making tiny desserts, make one large parfait to scoop out family style! The options are endless!

FEATURE DESSERT RECIPES:

Anytime you’re baking or cooking in your kitchen, we’d love for you to pop over the Rachel’s Kitchen Conversations on FB to share your experience! We love to see and celebrate everyone’s creations in our virtual community