This past weekend the stars aligned and D and I rented a cargo van to take some of our too-much-to-fit-in-our-small-apartment furniture to his parents' place in Michigan to store. Nothing like two 12-hour drives in three days! In between our epic road trip to and from Kalamazoo, we were able to get in some quality-time with the family. On Saturday while D and his dad visited a home expo, Sheila (D's mom) and I tried our hand at making cake pops. I have been obsessed with these things since receiving a batch last year as a gift around Thanksgiving (they were decorated as turkeys with pretzel legs and candy-corn tails), and I figured this would make a fun activity for the two of us to try together.
Sheila gathered all the supplies, and after a quick trip to pick up a few more essentials, we returned home and got things rolling by baking a cake. (We followed Bakerella's cake pop recipe.) To keep things simple, we used a mix from a box and also used store-bought frosting; when I'm feeling a little bit more adventurous, I'll have to try to make everything from scratch. The biggest lesson learned was that these things take time -- particularly in allowing enough time for cooling and chilling the dough balls, etc. After baking the cake, we let it cool, then crumbled it up into a large bowl. The crumbled cake was mixed with about 1/2 a can of frosting. From this doughy mixture we formed little cake balls. While chilling them for a few minutes, we melted some white chocolate and then dipped one end of each the lollipop stick into the chocolate before inserting them them into the chilled balls to help them stick. (At this point, I'd suggest chilling the balls for another 15 minutes or so -- we didn't, and some of the balls got a little too mushy and fell off their sticks.) We then dipped the balls in chocolate, tapping gently and carefully twirling to remove any excess chocolate. Next we decorated them with rainbow sprinkles and then stuck each pop upright into a piece of styrofoam to let the chocolate harden.
The cake pops seemed to be a hit with those who tried them later that evening -- and man, how can you not love cake on a stick? On Sunday, we packaged up a few for D and I to take on the road -- to do this, all you need is some small cellophane bags and colorful ribbon. Easy-peasy! And really yummy. Good thing I only packed up four to take home!
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