How gorgeous are these Cheesecake Truffles, Dear Reader? Wouldn’t a plate of them be a nice surprise for your Valentine?

You won’t believe how easy they are to make, and they taste even better than they look.

In my case, it’s not hard to taste better than they look. I hesitated to even post a picture of my cheesecake truffles because they’re hideously ugly.

Ugly or not, they were simple to put together and inexpensive to make. And they taste amazing. They’re so good that someone I know gave herself a belly ache sampling them just now.

Come on! It wasn’t me! Okay, Dear Reader. It was me.

If there are any left after my sampling, I might even share them with Grace and Joe, which is the whole point of making a Valentine’s Day treat, right?

If I hadn’t just eaten them all, I might have packed some up in little boxes of four or six to give to my best girlfriends and Grace’s grandparents. They would have made a really nice little Valentine’s Day gift.

Fortunately, this recipe takes all of 15 minutes, so I can make more before anyone notices that I ate them all.

Easy Cheesecake Truffles

Ingredients:

• 1 container of Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• a jar of colored sugar or 1/2 cup cocoa powder, unsweetened

Instructions:

1. Heat the chocolate chips and heavy cream in a microwave safe bowl at 50% power for 1 minute. Stir well, until chocolate and cream are well blended. Chocolate chips hold their shape, even after they’ve melted, so stir it even if you don’t think it’s ready for stirring. If the chips are not completely melted, heat for an additional 30 seconds at 50% power. Stir well. Continue heating in 30 second intervals at 50% power until chocolate is melted and creamy. (I found this step to be tricky. It took me about 5 minutes of heating and stirring and heating and stirring to get the chocolate warm enough to coat the cheesecake. I don’t work with melted chocolate much, so I was afraid of scorching it. More on that in the notes, below.)
2. Remove Cheesecake Bites from freezer. Using a fork, carefully dip the bites into the melted chocolate and roll them around to coat.
3. Place dipped bites onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, and dust them with colored sugar or cocoa powder using a sifter or flour shaker. (I forgot to do this while I was dipping them, so I did it after they’d been frozen. The sugar stuck to the frozen chocolate better than I thought it would, as you can see above.)
4. Return bites to freezer to set for at least one hour before serving.

Notes:

• I thought this would be a great family project, but it wasn’t. The melted chocolate is way too hot to let Gracie help with it. I thought it would have been dangerous to have her in the kitchen while I was working with that. It would probably be okay with an older child who can be trusted not to stick their hands into the melted chocolate. Use caution if you try.
• You can melt your chocolate in any way you like. I might try a double boiler next time, just to compare.
• If your melted chocolate gets grainy or tastes bad, you’ve burned it. Throw it away and start over. If the chocolate separates, you might be able to fix it by adding extra cream and stirring it like crazy.
• You are going to have to remelt your chocolate three or four times while you’re dipping the cheesecake bites. The frozen cheesecake bites make the chocolate harden pretty quickly.
• I think the finished truffles taste best at room temperature. You are supposed to keep the cheesecake bites frozen, though, so I wouldn’t store them at room temperature very long.
• My very small grocery store had only strawberry and chocolate Sara Lee Cheesecake Bites, but you should also be able to find original flavor. I used strawberry, and the results were very nice.

Guess what, Dear Reader! Sara Lee is giving away 5 coupons for frozen treats to one lucky Feels like Home reader! Each coupon is good for one free Sara Lee sweet goods product, up to $7.

To enter: Visit Sara Lee’s The Joy of Eating and chose your favorite recipe from the ones listed. It can be a savory or sweet recipe, whatever looks good to you. Come back here and tell us the recipe and why it looks good to you. Be sure to leave a way for me to contact you. US entrants only, please.

For extra entries: You can earn one extra entry for each of the following:

1. Tweet about this giveaway and leave the URL for the Tweet in the comments.
2. Stumble this post and write a brief review.
3. Write about this giveaway on your blog, including Feels like Home and Sara Lee. Leave the URL in a comment.
4. Post my button on your sidebar. Report the URL for your site in a comment.
5. Subscribe to my feed and report it in the comments.

Good luck! I’ll use Random.org to choose a winner some time after 11:59 pm on January 27, 2009.

Happily submitted to Mouthwatering Mondays, Tempt my Tummy Tuesday, Kitchen Tip Tuesday,Talk to me Tuesday, Talk About Tuesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Whatcha Working on Wednesday, and ef="http://sweets-mycountryhome.blogspot.com/search/label/Whatcha%20Working%20On%20Wednesday">Tasty Thursday