So I made the decision that I really want to do something creative, baking wise. I’ve talked about my love of cupcakes, in my Cupcake Wars entry, so I’m thinking I really need to nurture my passion. With that thought in mind, I threw caution to the wind and made cake pops this weekend!
For those of you who don’t know, a cake pop is a little ball of cake at the end of a lollipop stick. You can create any flavor you desire, anything that’s made into a cake mix (homemade or store bought). Seeing as this was my first creation, I wanted the cake to be something I knew Ryan would eat no matter how it looked…LEMON! So I took to the store and got the essential ingredients: lemon supreme cake mix, a tub of cream cheese frosting, eggs, vegetable oil, chocolate for melting (or candy melts), Styrofoam and sprinkles to decorate!
I really had no idea this was going to be such a time consuming project. I didn’t read the instructions from Cooks.com fully to see that it was going to be several hours versus one or two. Regardless, I was committed to making these cake pops! I followed the instructions on the box to bake the cake. Thirty-five minutes later I had to wait, what seemed like forever, for the cake to cool. Just an FYI, to occupy my time in my breaks I cleaned my house, watched a recorded show and went to the gym! I’m not a patient person. LOL. Anywho, back to my adventure… After the cake cooled, I proceeded to crumble the cake with the tub of cream cheese frosting. I used my hands to mix everything really well, a messy but delicious method. :) I made what I thought were decent size balls, probably could have been a little bit smaller, and put them on a greased baking pan. Stuck the lollipop sticks in and put them in the refrigerator. After about 3 hours, recipe said to wait 2, but I wanted to make sure those suckers were hardened, I took them out and tried dipping them into the white chocolate. This is where it really got interesting!!! The sticks didn’t really hold the cake balls too well (find out why in ‘Lesson Learned’ section), so I was manually putting white chocolate all over the cake balls. To make matters worse, the Styrofoam was too tough and wouldn’t hold the lollipop sticks. So my hands were covered in white chocolate as I juggled the dipping of the cake balls, placing them on the baking sheet and trying to sprinkle them with little green crystals as the chocolate was hardening FAST! Goodness….it was a crazy system. But it worked; after I finished with my last cake pop (and consumed enough chocolate to last a week) I put the little guys into the fridge for another 2 hours.
 |
| Yummy goodness! :) |
Lessons learned: I thought I had made the cake balls to large, which is why the stick wasn’t able to support them as I was dipping them into the white chocolate; however, my friend Amanda informed me it’s because I needed to dip the sticks into the white chocolate first and then insert into the balls. That way when they are being refrigerated the chocolate would harden and cement the cake ball to the stick. Also, going to make sure the Styrofoam works for the lollipop sticks PRIOR to starting the chocolate dipping!
The end result (see photo); they didn’t turn out as great as I would have liked, but I’m definitely doing it again. Taking what I learned and adding a little more creativity into the décor, like the ones on Bakerella.com! I will say however, that everyone who has tried them said they are scrumptious!! My goal is to be able to bring these delicious treats to family occasions and parties in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment