Cake Pops

I'm all about grabbing the moment. Today was one of those opportunities meant to be jumped on. I felt uncommonly energetic this morning. I didn't sleep especially long last night. I got up in the morning fully expecting to be back in bed in a couple of hours. But I continued to feel wide awake! That doesn't usually happen. So, given that I was feeling so perky and there are so many things I've been wanting to do, I phoned Alexa. She and I have been wanting to get together for a baking date for a very long time and, as luck would have it, she was available on this last day before she starts grade 9!

I picked her up, we buzzed through Michael's for a few supplies, and then to my place where we made cake pops! Neither of us had ever made them before but I had been admiring the work of Bakerella. You can see all kinds of amazing cake pops on her blog. She's recently published a book about them, too (available at amazon). So, with her instructions and examples as our guide we set about making them.

Making the pops themselves is silly easy! Decorating them with finesse is a whole 'nother story! Still, after making them this one time, we learned a lot about what we would do differently next time. We learned some tricks that we'd incorporate. If the edible pens we bought at Michael's had worked better, it would have made a big difference. We had planned on making "happy face pops" and if the pens had worked, they would have been just like the picture. But since the pens didn't work, we free-styled, which was both fun and/or pretty!

Here's how easy it is to make the basic pop:

1. Make a cake mix - any kind you want. Doesn't matter.  We used chocolate because it's what I had on hand. Let it cool.
2. Crumble up the cake in a big bowl and stir in most of a container of whatever kind of pre-made icing you want. We used Betty Crocker's cream cheese frosting.
3. Shape the cake dough into balls and place them on some waxed paper on a cookie sheet. 
4. Melt a few rounds of candy coating (we bought packages at Michael's in the baking aisle) and dip a lollipop stick (we bought those at Michael's, too) into the candy coating and then almost half way into a ball.
5. When all the balls have sticks, put them in the freezer for about half an hour or until the balls are firm.

That's your basic cake pop.  After that, you melt candy coating, dip the cake balls in it.  The coating hardens really quickly and then you decorate. This part requires a little more finesse and the right supplies but once you have that part figured out, I'll bet any one of us could turn out amazing results.

The cake pop 2nd from the left is Alexa's cake pop portrait of me!

After we finished decorating them, we put a little cellophane bag over each and tied a bow with some pretty baker's twine.

Once the candy coating has hardened, which is very quick, the little cake pops are amazingly durable!

Check out Bakerella's blog to see the many examples of pops that other people have made and submitted to her. She calls that section of her blog, "pop stars". Cute. You're going to want to make some.