Pop-ular

Cake Pops seem to be what's in right now. And it's easy to see why. They're incredibly versatile. They are portion controlled. And let's face it: they're soo cute!!

My grandmother and I have been working on our cake pop technique in the last week. The first batch we made from a recipe that instructed us to bake a cake then crumble it. Then it told us to use icing to stick the crumbs together into little balls. Once that was finished, we dipped lollipop sticks into melted chocolate, stuck them into the pops, and froze them for a while. After they got nice and hard, we covered them in various melted candies. You can't go wrong with dipping them in chocolate and sprinkling tiny colored dots on top. They can't help but look festive. We even added a wrapper and gold twist tie to make them look pro-fessional.

The next batch of cake pops we did a little differently. We used pound cake and a cookie cutter to form the pops, dipped them in chocolate, and sprinkled them too. That worked very well and it was much less effort than the previous method, but maybe not as pretty. 

We also found this way of drying works best. Floral styrofoam- fairly cheap and you can use it over and over.

But, we had a major breakthrough this last time. I bought a pan that makes balls of cake. It's cute and fun and it really works! It's by a company called BabyCakes. Using that grandma and I created a fantastic array of beautiful cake pops this afternoon.

Usually we work at grandma's house with her well-equipped kitchen and craft closet. But today we were working in my house. Neither my kitchen nor my craft closet is as well stocked as hers. She's lived in the same house for 30+ years and I've lived here since June. I forgot to tell her to bring the foam so, we made do with what I had. Which was a styrofoam wig head that has already had kind of a hard life. In previous projects she has had a more dignified role as a model in my photography:

But today she served a very different purpose:

What a trooper.

But really, let's get a close-up on these beauties

Fantastic fun. And very delicious. The brown nutty-looking stuff is toffee. Some are sprinkled with cayenne pepper and some have salt. The drizzling was my favorite part. It doesn't take any work at all to make a cake pop look great. And it's a very egalitarian desert. Anyone can have one.  If you're on a diet or if you're diabetic, no big deal- it's just a bite! It's not going to throw everything out of whack. There are hundreds of reasons to eat these little babies. If you haven't tried them yet, jump on the bandwagon!