3 Sweet Ways Cheese is Turning Into Candy

While people may be used to cheese in desserts like cheesecake or tiramisu, cheesemakers, chocolatiers and other confectioners are transforming cheese into delicious chocolates and caramels.

The past decade or so, we’ve seen the popularity of sweet and savory foods in the US market. Steve Earthman, co-founder of Call Me Caramel attributes the popularity of mixing sweet and savory things from the combination of bacon and chocolate. Earthman also points out that we’ve had caramel and cheese popcorn for a long time as well. While a newer trend in the West, he notes that various cuisines in Asia have long been combining sweet, savory and umami tastes.

Cheese, chocolate and caramel creations also mean collaborations, often between cheesemakers, chocolatiers, and other chefs.

Chocolate Covered Cheese Truffles

Quark chocolates photo courtesy of Creamery of Pleasant Lane Farm

The Creamery of Pleasant Lane Farms practically cannot keep their award-winning chocolate covered cheese truffles in stock. They are so popular, explained Jason Frye, “[w]e can order 10 dozen of them and they'll be gone in a weekend.” The truffles are made with their quark cheese, a German cheese spread, and chocolate from local chocolatier O’Shea’s Candies.

The truffles had a fortuitous beginning. The owner of O’Shea’s was on a keto diet and came across quark cheese which can be spread on bagels, waffles, etc. But since he was a chocolatier, “he had tried to mix in some sweet flavors,” Frye said, and made a spread that tasted good. Initially, both companies thought they’d sell it as a spread. However, Frye said it tasted a bit like a chocolate mascarpone.

But O’Shea Candies “decided to roll and hand dip” the quark, explained Frye, which was delicious and a hit with the customers. Frye said, “customers just tore into them.” So much so that they were complaining about the bigger boxes containing chocolate quark because they would eat 15 of them before even leaving Pleasant Farm. “Oh I don't see how that's a problem for me,” Frye laughed.

Now they have many flavors of chocolate covered quark truffles including peanut butter, turtle quark, and then mystery flavors of the week from birthday cake to strawberry.

Quark is also used in a variety of other dessert dishes. Frye’s wife developed a Chocolate Quark Mousse recipe, which is available on the website, along with a German Cheesecake recipe.

Smokey Blue Cheese Truffle

Thanks to a collaboration between award-winning Rogue Creamery and Lillie Belle Farms, smokey blue cheese truffles exist in the world. They are honestly one of the most unique tasting truffles I’ve tried; it’s made from organic milk chocolate mixed with blue cheese, covered in toasted almonds.

“It is like a tiny chocolate cheesecake with a smoked almond crust,” said Lillie Belle Farms owner Jeff Shepherd. Each truffle is hand-rolled and hand-dipped. It’s not too sweet but a bit more savoury than the average chocolate truffle (even with the milk chocolate).

But the process of making the blue cheese truffles required a lot of experimentation and perseverance. In 2006, David Gremmels, president of Rogue Creamery, asked Shepherd if he could make a chocolate truffle with one of Rogue’s blue cheeses. Shepherd responded, “I have no idea. Give me your cheese.” It took six months of experimentation with different ratios of ingredients, combinations, and more, and he said, “We made the world’s worst truffles.”

Then one day it clicked for Shepherd. He liked a smokey blue cheese because of the smokiness and the salt content. On top of that, he decided to move away from using dark chocolate, even if that was what Lillie Belle Farms is best known for. Instead of using toasted hazelnuts, which gave the truffles too strong and bitter of a taste, he used toasted almonds. It just came together, he said. They started selling the truffles in 2007 and neither Rogue Creamery nor Lillie Belle have looked back.

It works on its own, but the truffles can be warmed up and then paired with green apple or pears. “People like to pair it with wines, champagnes, warm baguette slices where it just melts into it like an adult Nutella,” Shepherd said. (Lillie Belle also sells a spread version too).

While some people may find blue cheese polarizing, the smokey blue cheese truffles are a hit. Both businesses sell the truffles, though Rogue Creamery sells them individually. Thomas Von Voorhees, Retail Manager and Ring Master at Rogue Creamery, noted that between their shop and the farmstand, they sold 2,160 individual truffles. “It's one of our best selling items by a mile,” Von Voorhees said. And that’s accounting for the days they’ve sold out since Shepherd works to keep them stocked.

On top of individual truffles, the truffles are available by the box and included in some of Rogue’s past cheese club subscriptions. Agreeing with Earthman at Call Me Caramel, Von Voorhees explained, “People just love salty and sweet together. They love it. It's like the year that salted caramel took over the world.”

Cheese Caramels

Call Me Caramel cheese caramel — Call Me Caramel photo credit of Call Me Caramel

Co-founders Steve Earthman and Jessica Sennett established Call Me Caramel in 2016. The concept came out of cheese pop up dinners that Sennett ran in 2015. As she talked with cheesemongers, many of the cheeses she found had tasting notes that included caramel. “It just seemed kind of silly that there wasn't a cheese caramel,” Earthman said. Sennett decided to make a quick version for dinner and it worked out well.

They were still on the fence about it but after a holiday sale, they decided there was something there and were excited about founding the company. Right now, they have three flavors: Gruyère AOP, Prairie Breeze Cheddar, and Carr Valley Smoked Gouda but Earthman hopes they’ll expand to ten flavors this year. In particular, “our ultimate goal is to really make sure that we highlight local and regional dairy producers,” Earthman says. They’re working with a New York based cheesemaker and two North Carolina cheesemakers.

It’s important to work with cheeses that aren’t too sweet, since that would defeat the purpose. “What you're looking for is something that can complement the different flavors that are found in the current cheeses that we're using,” Earthman says.

For instance, they knew they wanted to work with the Gruyère AOP since it has a 900 year old history. “Being able to utilize [the Gruyere AOP] on our product is something that's very important to us because it shows the standard of quality and care for the user,” Earthman explains. While the cheese caramels are innovative, “we want to pay homage and respect to tradition and history.”

Earthman has seen their customers use the cheese caramels in several different ways. One customer told him that they had made a cheesecake by incorporating the caramels into the batter, and then drizzled melted ones on top. Others have used the caramels for fondue. For Halloween, one customer ordered them in bulk to make caramel apples.

Ultimately, they are looking forward to working with new small businesses and helping to support one another. Earthman says, “I think the pandemic shifted our view a little bit in that community is really important. Making sure that our successes are other people's successes, and not just trying to grow for the sake of growing but really honoring the fact that we're one of hundreds of 1000s of voices and wanting to lift those voices up with ours.”