November 18, 2012

cake pops

For my roommate Megan's birthday I thought about making funfetti cake, since funfetti mix is her favorite. However, when I stumbled upon a funfetti cake pops box, I knew I had to get that instead.

I've never made cake pops before, and as with anything I've never made before there was a bit of mystery attached. Like how do you get the cake pop to be round? Or the stick to stick?

Turns out you start with actual cake. Which is crumbled and moistened with frosting. While this cake mix and frosting were included in the box, you can easily substitute your favorite cake recipe and whip up an easy powdered sugar + milk (or water) frosting.

crumbled cake & frosting

Then you portion out the crumbly cake mixture and form them into ball-shape with your palms. Apply lots of pressure so the cake balls get firm and dense and don't fall apart on you.

Melt some chocolate in the microwave (at 15 to 30 second intervals so it doesn't burn). Dip one end of the cake pop stick into the melted chocolate and stick it into the cake ball. If you don't have cake pop or lollipop sticks, you can break up disposable chopsticks and sand the ends down with a nail file. That's what I did because the box was missing a stick.

cake balls & couverture

Put the naked cake pops into the fridge to chill. Or if you're impatient like me, stick them in the freezer.

In the meantime, prepare more melted chocolate and sprinkles/decoration. Once the cake pops are thoroughly chilled, roll them each in chocolate, cover them in sprinkles, and stand them up to dry/set in a container full of sugar (dense enough to hold them up).

dip & sprinkle

Rather than give Megan just a cup full of cake pops, I made her favorite yellow cake to use as a cushion.

cake pop cake

Although the cake was frosted with whipped cream, it didn't look too nice because I didn't have my offset spatula. So I covered the cake with cake crumbs, which worked out because it made the cake look more like a cushion.

And despite the yellow cake mix being a boxed one, I ended up enjoying the super moist crumbly texture a lot. So I'm going to reverse engineer my own yellow cake mix based on the ingredients on the box. Will report back once I have some findings!

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