Marbled Cake Pops

So after baking up the six layers of my galaxy rainbow cake (and seeing how short they were) I was unaccountably struck with the fear that there might not be enough cake for all of the guests. (Spoiler: there was tons of cake left over) I decided to make some extra treats for the party, just in case– cake pops. I hadn’t made them in a while, but a little internet research turned up some new techniques for making them look fantastic, so I thought I’d give them a shot, using an extra box of cake mix and some leftover buttercream, plus candy melts.

Step 1: making perfectly smooth, round balls for dipping.

In the past I’ve crumbled up my cake and mixed it with cream cheese or frosting by hand, just because it was easier. However, the results have been somewhat lumpy, probably because the crumbs weren’t quite fine enough and the mixing was uneven. I think I’ve been trying to avoid making the mixture too gooey from overmixing, but it really wasn’t a problem. Solution: use the stand mixer to completely mix the cake and frosting into a smooth, homogenous dough. Add frosting sparingly to avoid your mixture being too soft.

Once you’ve got the dough set, portion it into balls and hand-roll them to a generally round shape. If you want them to be even more perfectly round, you can do this:

 

(though 14 seconds is way longer than you need)

When they’re shaped, stick them in the freezer for a few minutes while you prep your candy melts.

Eyeball Cake Pops

For a Halloween party this past weekend I was tasked with bringing something sweet– last year I made iced pumpkin cake balls, which were a rousing success, so I decided to revisit the idea and try again with a different theme. Eyeballs!

This time I started off with a regular box of white cake mix, doctoring it up with some sour cream in place of the water– in this case 1 1/4 cups of it. This really is necessary to make the cake batter thick enough to properly fill the wells of the cake pop maker– otherwise the batter is so thin that when it rises it just overflows, rather than doming to fill out the ball shape.

Once my cake balls were cool I popped them in the freezer for a little while to firm them up a bit while I prepared my coatings.

Iced Mini Pumpkins

Happy Halloween, everyone!

My daughter’s class is having a Halloween party and has requested parent contributions to the menu– naturally, I volunteered to bring a dessert item, and asked her what she’d like me to make. After a little debate about ingredients and logistics, we decided on pumpkin muffin balls decorated to look like pumpkins. And I can’t wait to tell you about an awesome discovery I made with regard to decorating icing– but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I started off with my standard pumpkin muffin recipe, omitting the white chocolate chips and nuts. I doubled it, and baked up the batter in my trusty cake pop maker.

Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops

I’ve had these in the back of my head for ages, and while they didn’t turn out precisely as planned, they did look adorable and taste fantastic, so I’m counting them as a win!

It all started when I saw the boxes of miniature ice cream cones at the grocery store… in Canada. I’d been unable to find the mini cones anywhere near me in the US, but when I saw them on the shelf I recklessly sacrificed suitcase space and picked up three boxes. Totally worth it.

Then they languished in my cabinets for a few months until I had the opportunity to use them. But the opportunity did arise, first at my annual ice cream social, and then when my daughter was invited to a birthday party this summer. Out came the boxes of cones, out came my bag-ful of frozen cake scraps, and I was all set!

The Cake Pop Chronicles, Part II: Canned Doughs

After my experiment with blueberry muffins, I decided to put a different spin on things and see what resulted when I used canned crescent roll dough and pizza crust in the cake pop maker. I tried both savory and sweet fillings here, to see which worked better.

The Cake Pop Chronicles, Part I: Blueberry Muffin Balls

So I was at Goodwill the other day looking for more pretty teacups for my mismatched tea set when I saw this: a Babycakes Cake Pop Maker for just $4.99. While I have absolutely no need for yet another small kitchen appliance (and no room), I picked it up anyway. I just can’t resist the idea of making adorable little spheres of food! Plus (I rationalized to myself), my daughter will think they’re awesome.