Cake Pops

Tom and I were lucky enough to get away last weekend to make an appearance at Sam's baby shower. It's getting so close to her due date!! Other than getting to catch-up with some of her and Brian's friends, I discovered what seems to be a new phenomenon in the realm of baking. Cake pops, anyone?? One of Sam's ultra-creative friends had made some of these diabolical delights for the shower and thanks to Sam's sister-in-law, Angie, I got the low-down on how to recreate them. The recipe is simple: you bake whatever type of cake you prefer (or multiple flavors if you want more variety in your batch). Once it's done baking, you crumble it up in a bowl and mix in a frosting flavor of your choice. Roll 'em into a ball, refrigerate them to harden, put a lollipop stick in an end (found at Hobby Lobby or another craft store), dip them in almond bark for the coating, roll in sprinkles, and voila! Cake pops! Okay, this actually makes it sound waaaaay easier than it turned out being for me, but I can pass along a few little lessons I learned along the way:

1) You cannot substitute regular melted chocolate for almond bark. Almond bark is "faux" chocolate, if you will. It's thinner than melted chocolate, thus easier for coating, less heavy and hardens much quicker. All important qualities in the making of cake pops. 

2) No matter how excited you are about making these cute little treats, don't jump the gun and take them out of the fridge too soon. I recommend leaving them in there overnight to play it safe. If you don't cool them for long enough, they are too soft and as you dip them, they will fall off the stick. Some recipes call for freezing them, but I also read this can dry them out too much and cause them to crack. Also, I had to leave the pan of them in the fridge as I dipped (I just took them out one at a time), because if they get a chance to thaw too much as your dipping, they will break apart from the stick.

3) Do not overdue the frosting/cake ratio. I did. I used a little over half the tub. Next time I will use less than half. My cake was already super-moist to begin with, as well. Using too much frosting causes them to be too rich in my opinion (more like cake batter rather than truffle-like) and this also exacerbates the issue of the cake falling off the lollipop stick. When I served these up at work, every time someone took a bite, the ball fell off the stick and they had to be eaten by hand. This would be fine, but defeats the purpose of the lollipop sticks that I drove all the way out to Johnson County to buy!!

I used red velvet cake with cream cheese icing on this first attempt (half with vanilla almond bark, half with chocolate almond bark).  I also picked up a styrofoam block at Hobby Lobby to put the sticks in after they were dipped. you could decorate the foam block with wrapping paper for a more professional look. The picture at the top is not of my own...but I will say that mine were just as cute as these!! I just forgot to take a picture of the ones I made before they were devoured :) Great dessert idea for any type of gathering, but just remember they take two days to make!