Cake Pops!

So I’ve been hearing a lot about Cake Pops lately and thought I better give them a go. I must say, I did not anticipate that they’d be as…tricky as they were. I think what made them tricky was that it’s sort of trial and error until you get it right. And they were pretty time consuming so it was a little tiring.  In usual fashion I figured I’d try to make a few different flavors and really cover the whole spectrum.  So the flavors that resulted were:

1) Lemon cake mixed with lemon frosting, and coated in white chocolate.

2) Lemon cake with strawberries mixed in and lemon frosting, coated in white chocolate. (Note: the addition of real strawberries was not good for the cake pop application, they were WAY too moist. Delicious, but not quite right for this)

3) Chocolate caramel cake with chocolate frosting, coated in dark chocolate. Sprinkled with coarse salt.

4) Vanilla cake with chocolate frosting, coated in dark chocolate. (Some had mini chocolate chips mixed in as well). Topped with mini chocolate chips or sprinkles.

For those of you who don’t understand the composition of a cake pop it goes like this:

1) Make a cake according to the recipe (I put mine in a 9×13 dish).

2) Let the cake cool, then dump it into a bowl and crush it up until it’s crumbs.

3) Then mix in a half container of prepared frosting (I’m not a fan of prepared frosting, but I went with it in this case since A) every cake pop recipe I’ve seen seems to call for it this way which maybe has a purpose, and B) it was nice to be simple!) to the cake crumbs until it’s all moistened and can form a ball.

4) Make 1″ balls and put on a cookie sheet covered in parchment (or wax) paper and refrigerate for 1 hour.

5) Melt chocolate and dip the stick (you don’t have to use sticks, you can just make cake balls – they’ll be like truffles) in the melted chocolate about a 1/2 inch and then put in the cake ball. Once you finish and get back to the first one it should be hard and makes like a little shelf for the ball to sit on.

6) Dip the cake pops in the chocolate, garnish as desired. You can then either lay then on a parchment papered cookie sheet if you’re okay with the cake pop having a flat side, or you can convert something like an old shoe box into a cake pop holder, or styrofoam, or anything really. And then let them dry!