However having said that, I read up on a lot of 'easy' recipes and tutorials online before attempting mine....and they are not even remotely easy. Sure the recipe is simple...leftover cake and some chocolate. Sure its hardly 2-3 ingredients. But that is where the easy ends. Assembling these babies takes time, effort and a bucket load of patience. If you made these perfect at your first attempt, I must give you a standing ovation. I don't want to scare or discourage people from trying this out...it is a lot of fun! You get your hands smothered in chocolate, which you can later lick. But be prepared for your pops falling out, not coming together, not sticking etc. Like I said, you need a lot of patience. So if you are brave enough to try this out, here are my two cents:
- Crumbing: Using your hands to break bits of cake and crumb it up the cake, is actually quite relaxing and a lot of fun. But if you don't want to get your hands dirty or are a tad bit OCD about crumb size, use a food processor or blender. It will break the cake into even crumbs with no chunks.
- I didn't know this: You can melt chocolate in a microwave! Hallelujah! No more double boiler nonsense. Just roughly cut the chocolate and put in the your microwave at high heat. It takes all of two minutes!
- Go easy on the chocolate: Now the cake is already moist (and like always, I added a dash of brandy in mine), so only add a little chocolate. The only job of the chocolate/ frosting is to bind the cake. So add a little and check out if the cake comes together. Adding too much will make your 'batter' moist and you will end up having to add more cake to balance it out.
- If you do end up adding a lot of frosting/chocolate (like I did), put the cake in the fridge to cool so that the chocolate solidifies again and your mix will be easier to roll after. However, the only disadvantage to this is that once you remove the cake from the fridge, you have to work quickly else the chocolate will melt again and you are back to square one.
- Use your hands: It helps to mix and roll the cake in your hands so that you can get a feel of it. When I used a spoon, I couldn't tell if I had put too much chocolate. It was when I touched it that I realized the 'dough' was too moist and I couldn't roll it into a ball.
- Use ice cream scooper: This isn't mandatory, but use an ice cream scooper to scoop up the 'dough'. You will get neat and even balls. Not only does it save you a lot of effort, it will save you cleaning up time as well.
- Use a deep narrow cup for dipping. The bowl should be deep enough to be able to dip the ball completely
- Use styrofoam (thermocol): A block of thermocol makes for a great holder to stick the pops in
- And lastly, why stick to boring straws and skewers? Have your cake and eat the stick too. I got a little creative and used wafer roll sticks and candy canes.
Since I went ahead and did my own thing, no credits for this post. For the Cake Pops you will need:
Cake (duh): Preferably old crumbly cake. I used my parents anniversary cake. It was a rich plum cake with some fondant that was lying in my fridge for over 6 months. Its perfect because it was rich and crumbly at the same time
Chocolate: I used dark chocolate to bind the cake and white chocolate as frosting to coat it.
Optional:
A dash of cream: I added this to the chocolate to make a ganache instead of just plain regular chocolate
Sprinkles etc to decorate the cake pops. I omitted this in my pop as it was already too rich.
A dash of booze for added flavour
A dash of booze for added flavour
Crumb the cake to workable bits. I added some rum at this point.
Add the melted chocolate
Combine together to form a rough 'dough'. Roll into bite sized balls. I used thick straws and edible wafers as holders and hence I went for larger balls. But if you are using lollipop sticks aim for smaller balls.
Dip sticks into melted chocolate and insert into the balls. The chocolate acts as glue. Don't insert the straw too deep or the ball would start to come undone.
Refrigerate until firm. Use this time to prep up other supplies. Warm your chocolate or make a ganache. Bring out the sprinkles.
Dip the pop in the melted chocolate. Allow excess chocolate to drip from the pop before putting them in a holder. Once the chocolate is set, they are ready to be served!
I was going for the whole 'north pole' theme, hence I've used wafers as sticks and my ganache is set only half way, giving a snow covered effect.
You can go crazy with these. You can use any flavoured cake, even leftovers. You can use butter, frosting or even oil as a binding agent for the cake. And obviously you can go crazy with toppings. My favourite place to gawk at cake pops is www.bakerella.com (she apparently invented it! such genius).
