Cake Pops

I've been wanting to try cake pops again since the last time I tried they were a failure. This time I was prepared - I bought the book of all books from Bakerella! She is the master of cake pops - I wish I had her talent! I read the book cover to cover and love all the cute ideas in this book.
I finally had an excuse to make a lot of something - cake pops make over 60 pops - for Trevor's 5th Birthday! We needed treats for his class at school and his baseball team for practice the night of his birthday. Hard to believe that my baby boy is 5!You start out with cakes and cake frosting. You can use cake box mix and premade frosting, but I used the recipes in Bakerella's cookbook for both. I don't like to cheat like that! I did an experiment here. Knowing I was going to crumble the cakes up, I tried not using parchment paper in the bottom of my cake pans....with the GOOD cake pan I have it was fine - came out perfectly using just Pam. A work of art! This is what happened with the cheap cake pan I have using just Pam! Proves that sometimes you get what you pay for, right? After you bake the cakes you crumble them all up -this is fun! See why it didn't matter what my cakes looked like after coming out of the pan? Next put the frosting in with the crumbled cake and smoosh that all together. Actually a fun process I think!! Then you roll all of those into balls for the pops! With the frosting mixed in they roll into balls really easily. You then put them in the refrigerator for several hours or the freezer for a bit so they are nice and firm when you take the next step which is dipping them in chocolate. I had to gather lots of things for these ice cream cones....first the candy melts. Here's where I went wrong when I made these a few months ago. I just used regular semi sweet chocolate. I hadn't done enough research or paid enough attention to that detail! You buy the candy melts at Michael's and they come in all different colors. Trevor requested yellow ice cream cones. Lots of sprinkles were needed for the ice cream cones. Ice cream cones. I found these baby ones and thought they would be a perfect size for this. Bakerella actually uses the long sugar cones and cuts them down but this looked much easier to me!Red jelly beans to put on top. So what a mess this process was!!! This is before they have the final toppings on. You roll the cake balls into the chocolate. Then place them on the cone and put sprinkles on them. Sprinkles were all over my kitchen floor before the night was over! And it was a challenge to keep those little cones standing up while I was making them. The final steps were adding a bit of dark chocolate and jelly bean on top! Luckily for me the chocolate didn't have to be perfect to look like ice cream. Kind of messy was what we were going for. I'm not sure how you get them to be all smooth like the pictures in her book. It might be easier when you do a cake pop that is on a stick so you can use that to roll them. I'll have to try that on my next adventure. These did turn out really yummy. Trevor's friends all liked them at his school. And I had plenty to give to his baseball team that night at practice. A fun treat to make if you ever need to make a lot of something. Here's Trevor posing with his new spy goggles he got for his birthday and his cake pop treat.
Happy Birthday, Trevor! Happy Baking, Jen

Easter Treats

Easter was a good excuse for me to make some fun things I hadn't had the chance to try before. It seems I like to add more and more the day before the event!

Started off with Feather-Light Breakfast Puffs from a cookbook I have called Just Like Mom Made. VERY easy to make and they were a hit. Almost like cinnamon rolls.


This was a last minute addition to my desserts for Easter - a Blackberry Custard Torte from Taste of Home. As you can see these are NOT blackberries! I used raspberries and cranberries instead. This was very easy to make!

Too bad not many people ate this - it was yummy and a recipe I would make again!
Showing off my creation.

Graham Cracker and Almond Crust with Cheesecake filling made to look like Egg's nest with coconut and jelly bean toppings. This was the 2nd attempt for these. The first ones the crust didn't do what I wanted and wasn't actually able to make them like nests - more just like flat cookies. Got to thinking I wanted to attempt them again and luckily I had all the ingredients!

I had my little helper here with this dessert...putting the coconut and jelly beans on. It went something like this 1 jelly bean for the dessert, 2 for Trevor, 1 for dessert, 2 for Trevor. Cake Balls/Pops are all the craze right now. So of course I had to try them. Bakerella has made these famous and they are gorgeous. I am definitely going to have to try my hand at these again because they did NOT turn out how I envisioned. Now it's my mission! You start out with a cake - and I found a wonderful recipe from The Pioneer Woman . I would use this recipe again. The chocolate cake was so soft and came out perfectly from my pans. Too bad I wasn't going to make a cake out of them!


You actually mash the entire cake up!!! Put it in a bowl and mix with the frosting. Mix that all up until it disappears.

Then you roll them into balls. I wanted to make Easter eggs so tried that. Bakerella puts them on cookie sticks and maybe that is why mine didn't work well....But this recipe made 65 balls!! OH MY. Next time I will have to use 1/2 the recipe. Up until now this was pretty easy to do. Lots of steps but not hard. After rolling the balls you stick them in the freezer. Even over night because you want them to be nice and solid before the next step which is to roll them in chocolate. That was where I went wrong. I've never been to good at dipping in chocolate and this time was no exception. I used every stitch of chocolate I had in my house!!! And they didn't come out very nicely. Too goopy with chocolate....darn it! And it wasn't even easy for me to get the sprinkles on. I had wanted to make colored Easter eggs...but when I tried to add my color to the white chocolate on one batch - it immediately turned hard and wasn't liquid again?!! Huh? Not sure what the heck happened. Any ideas there? So there went my egg colors. But because this made so much we had white, dark and milk chocolate balls. I need to have a tutor help me with these next time!


Here is the platter I took to Easter. My cookies of course were there too!


And let's not forget Snickerdoodles! Dad's favorite and Trevor and I got an itching to bake! Turned out not too bad although I did made the balls a little too big and they expanded more than I thought...oh well.
Trevor was really my helper with these cookies! He's getting more into the baking with me! He cut up the butter for me with his own little knife (a butter knife and don't worry, I was right there making sure he was being safe!)
Then he did a great job of rolling the cookie balls in the cinnamon and sugar mix. He didn't lose interest at all and rolled all the cookies for me!


And then guess what? He wanted to clean up! Yes, Trevor voluntarily said he wanted to clean the bowls. Go for it Trevor! You are a big helper!


As you can see we were busy baking!!!!
Hope you had a great Easter!