My friend and I were talking about cake pops a while ago and I thought I'd make him some and send them down to Liverpool. Hopefully they'll make it.
First, I made a chocolate cake. I used the cupcakes recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery book which made a single (quite slim) layer of chocolate cake. I got 12 quite large pops out of it but could have got 18 smaller, or if I'd used the full recipe for a double layer cake I'd have got about 24-30.
Anyway, I made a cake. Tasted good.
Then I broke it all up and put it in the mixer. Nearly broke my heart to just make it then destroy it!!
Afterwards I mixed in a good dollop of frosting. I should probably mention at this point that when buying the ingredients for this weekend I seriously toyed with buying premade frosting in a can. I know, I know... But I stood in the baking aisle of Tesco and desperately tried to reason to myself that it was an ingredient and wouldn't be tasted by itself so wouldn't it just be easier to buy it? Needless to say it wasn't my morals that put me off, but the £3.50 price tag that Mrs Fields charges. Bandit. Moving on.
When it was all combined I used an ice cream scoop to put little balls (about 2 inches?) onto a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. I poked the lollypop sticks into the balls to create little holes then I melted a little bowl of blue Candy Melts and dipped the end of one stick into the melted chocolate, then placed it into the hole to create a cake lollypop.
At this point they went into the freezer for an hour to make sure the chocolate holding the stick in was solid. I ended up taking the whole top drawer out of the freezer just to make them fit (well I wasn't bloomin going to all this trouble then falling over THIS particular hurdle!).
After the hour was up I brought them out, melted the rest of the bag of Candy Melt and dipped the chocolate cake into the frosting.
The problem of where to put them while the chocolate hardens is given different solutions depending on what blog you're on. I'd decided to get some polystyrine and put them in there but when looking in the cake decorating aisle in Hobbycraft I noticed they actually had a Wilton's Cake Pop Stand. I literally cannot stress enough how AWFUL this product was. Its two circles of cardboard held together in the middle by folding other bits of cardboard. I put one cake pop in and the whole thing collapsed, taking my carefully sculpted cake pop with it. Damn Wiltons...I can't actually find it anywhere online so it could be they've realised how dire it is and discontinued it. So anyway, after being really careful I had to make stands out of random things I found in the kitchen by poking holes in boxes - not bloomin easy!
After dipping the cakes in chocolate I rolled some in sprinkles, sugar etc and dusted blue glitter over a couple.
Again, for a first attempt I'm fairly pleased with how they've turned out. Definitely some things to take on board next time but overall not too shabby.
PS - always remember to put your dishcloth over the mixer when making frosting.....or else.....
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