Okay let’s face it, my favourite cake is red velvet cake. It’s light, moist, and with the cream cheese icing, just the perfect degree of sweet. I had cake pops once before at a Volunteer Gala held by my student federation last year, but they weren’t really cake pops, but basically weird super sweet icing balls covered in chocolate. They were really pretty, but way too sweet for my liking. These are definitely way better, I actually can’t stop eating these. It’s awful.
I first heard about these a few years ago when Bakerella started doing them. They looked far too complicated for me back then though, especially since I didn’t really have access to an oven then or any solid experience in baking. Also, the ones I saw were super fancy with reindeer antlers and painted eyes. No spank you, that’s too much effort for me now. Maybe later. AND NOW IT’S LATER.
But I didn’t make it that fancy. I figured I’d master the basics first, yeah?
By the way, there’s a new poll to the right over thurr —> Please let me know when you read my blog haha. I find that the posts that I post on Tuesdays or Wednesdays (days where I have time to bake and blog) the maximum amount of readers I’d get were like 10-15 whereas I’d get anywhere between 50-100 on the weekends, particularly on Sunday night. Other trends I see are during exam season, where people like to procrastinate I suppose, which I find rather hilarious, because procrastination is what got me started here in the first place.
Before we begin, I’d like to thank Christopher for helping me out with the pictures. All the pictures of the process of making cake pops were taken by Chris, and the ones of the finished products were taken by yours truly. My hands were a bit greasy/cakey as you can see in the pictures.
Let’s begin!
Materials:
- 1 baked cake of whatever flavour you desire (I chose Red Velvet Cake)
- Half the amount of icing you would normally need to ice that cake (I’d say about 1 1/2-2 cups of icing)
- 25 lollipop sticks
- 1-2 packages of candy melts (those flat circles that come in different colours at Bulk Barn, sometimes they’re called candy wafers or chocolate wafers too)
- Parchment paper
- Lots of room in your fridge!
Directions:
- Bake your cake and let cool. I used a 9×13 inch pan to bake my cake but I only ended up using about 3/4 of it. I didn’t have enough ingredients for a full batch of icing, nor did I think I would need it. Here’s the remainder of my cake:
- Make your icing and beat it until its really creamy. If you have a stand mixer, keep it on at the “stir” setting, and start breaking chunks of cake into the mixer. If you don’t have a stand mixer, use a fork to break up the cake until it’s reduced to crumbs. Fold in the icing until incorporated.
- Start rolling them into 1-inch balls. I stored them in a mixing bowl, separating the layers of cake balls with plastic wrap. Store in the fridge for about half an hour, or until they’re nice and firm.
- Once your cake balls are ready to be dipped, melt your candy melts in a double boiler until completely melted. Like me, you may need to transfer the melts to a smaller bowl or else there is too much surface area. you’ll need the mixture to be at least 1-inch deep to fully cover the cake pops.
- Arrange your cake balls on a plate lined with parchment paper (or if there’s enough room in your fridge, a baking sheet) This way you know the balls will stay flat on the plate and not roll around while there’s a lollipop stick sticking out. OR, if you have some sort of holder to keep the cake pops upright, just ignore this step.
- Start by dipping your lollipop stick into the candy melts. This will act as the glue/suctiony adhesive for your stick.
- Stick it into the cake ball. You’ll get a little pool of melted candy around the base, which will ensure that it stays on the stick.
- Dip the cake ball directly into the mixture. Make sure it’s straight on. Avoid twisting or shaking the cake ball at all, or else you may disloge the stick and you’ll lose your cake ball =P
- Tilt the cake ball kind of as you would a joystick until the cake pop is completely covered.
- Either stick upright in a holder or on a plate like I did and let cool in the fridge for 7-10 minutes or until the outer shell is nice and hard. Then OMNOMNOM!
Feel free to decorate with sprinkles =)
Happy Belated Birthday to K-Rae!
[...] was that because of the addition of the lemon curd, it was a pretty soft mixture, unlike my usual red (or purple) velvet cake pops, which only have half of my favourite cream cheese icing recipe. So I [...]