Despite being delicious and looking very pretty, these cake pops were an absolute disaster to make! I apparently thought I was on the Great British Bake off doing a technical challenge and decided not to follow a recipe and just sort of make it up as I went along, after having a brief look at "how to make cake pops" online, which looking back was a terrible idea! Turns out its great to actually follow a recipe when trying to make something you've never made before (unless you're Mary Berry) as it tells you how much of things you need and how to actually make the whatever it is your making! And of corse once one thing went wrong everything seemed to, I had cake pops falling off sticks, and chocolate dripping off onto the floor. But after much stressing over a few silly cake pops and running back and fourth to the shop for more chocolate, they turned out to be okay, my mum enjoyed them anyway which was good as they were after all supposed to be for her birthday.
So as they looked so adorable and did actually taste pretty good, I thought I would do a little post about how I made them, after I sorted out the few technical issues... enjoy x
Ive made cake pops plenty of times in the past using my cake pop maker (which is all pretty and pink) this involves making a cake batter and cooking them from scratch. But I didn't have a great deal of time yesterday so I decided to attempt to make the "cheats cake pop" (white chocolate of corse) which is basically just crumbled up shop bought cake mixed with melted chocolate rolled into little balls, then shoved onto a stick and decorated however you want! Sounds so simple, but the thing is I greatly underestimated the amount of chocolate that was required, so once i'd mixed in the little amount of chocolate I had, the cake crumbs were still very much crumb like, and no where near being capable of forming balls. But after a quick dash back to the shop I had enough chocolate to actually be able to make the things! and heres how...
What you will need:
- A large mixing bowl
- Another bowl for melting chocolate in
- Anon-iced sponge cake of your choice, I used a madeira cake
- Lots and lots of chocolate (about 4 big bars) so you have some left to coat your cake pops
- Mixing spoons
- Cake pop/lolly pop sticks
- A mug to hold the cake pops
- Sprinkles to decorate
- A plate to put the pops on once rolled
How to make them:
- Crumble your cake into the mixing bowl
- Melt about 3 bars or your chocolate over a low heat or in the microwave (how much chocolate you need does depend how much cake you have, I had a lot of cake, which was one of the reasons for the issues)
- Mix your chocolate into the cake crumbs, you can use a spoon, then your hands
- Using your hands roll the cake and chocolate mixture into small balls
- Melt your last bar of chocolate
- Put a little chocolate on the end of your stick, this will stop the cake pop falling off the stick
- Place the all cake balls onto the sticks
- Dip them in the melted chocolate, you could use a spoon to help cover them
- Stand in the mug, don't worry its normal for the cake pops to be dripping the excess chocolate off, just be prepared for a lot of cleaning up after wards.
- Decorate with sprinkles or icing or whatever you want
you don't have to cover your pops in melted chocolate you can use candy melts or Nutella or anything you want... be creative!
