Cake Pops!

Cake pops for tea?

I have wanted to try cake pops for a while now and I decided to  take the plunge and try them out.  I got the sticks for 99p for 50 on ebay which I thought was a bargain, plus I can easily wash and re-use them as they are pretty tough plastic.  I did look at a fair few tutorials and recipes online but in the end I just sort of winged it.

I bought a cheapo chocolate cake mix for under a pound that you just added eggs and water to for the the main cake as I didn't really want to spend lots on ingredients as this was a dry run for a Guide activity and I want to make them cheap and easy.  Plus I would be sad about blending up a perfectly good cake.  So after baking the cake mix I whizzed it in the food processor then made a batch of buttercream icing and mixed it all in.  Then I spent some time making very uneven balls and then using a little bit of chocolate to secure the sticks in the cake balls then I refridgerated.

One cake mix made around 40 pops

I wasn't sure how many I would make out of one batch but I had 39 so that would be plenty for my guide group when I do it with them.  I did leave them overnight as I didn't have much time so I was doing a little bit each day and they did go pretty solid.  This turned out to be a good thing though as it set the chocolate really quickly being cold and it stopped the crumbs falling off.  I won't have long to set them when I make them with guides so I am just hoping that they will be set enough.

Lollipop, no, cake pop!

I used chocolate to coat them as my local supermarket only had 2 types of candy melts and they were quite expensive.  The chocolate wasn't as smooth as I would like, I expect melts are a lot smoother as they contain more oils but they are fine for a trial.  I found citrus sprinkles which I thought would be great with the chocolate and you can taste them but they are still subtle. 

Butterflies!

I ran out of milk chocolate just over half way through so had to use white for the rest.  The white didn't cover the chocolate sponge as well, you can still see it through the chocolate, and sugar butterflies.  The white actually tastes really good with the sponge though.  Maybe 2 layers would work best but I didn't have time for that.  I worked out that if you used 100g of chocolate per 10 pops I would have plenty.  Especially as the girls are quite likely to pile it on and make a mess everywhere!  I have tested them out on my boyfriend and co-workers and they went down really well, they are very rich and the icing keeps the cake very moist.  I am definatley going to make more!