Cake Pops Recipe

My dear friend Miss T agreed to share some of her  baking secrets, here she talks about the new craze "cake pops". They look so yummy! Thanks Miss T. Mi xo

Cake pops made by Miss T.

Move aside cupcakes, the world has found another way to combine flour, eggs, butter and sugar in a new delicious way. Apparently everyone knows about these scrumptious treats except me. So I decided to leap onto the bandwagon and make a batch.

I'm definitely no mathematician but here is a rough formula:

Cake pops = (cake + frosting) + dip into chocolate + decorate.

Here is a more specific (and traditional) recipe:

Step 1: Make a Cake

It's really up to you what type of cake. A lot of cake pops recipes tell you to buy a packet cake because it's "easier". I don't think a packet cake is any harder than making it yourself. But it's up to you, as long as you end up with a baked cake. Any flavour. It could be chocolate... or anything else, but to me there really is only one type of cake in this world. I made a chocolate cake using the following ingredients (I use organic ingredients where possible, but that's a personal choice):

175 g butter

3/4 cups caster sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 organic eggs

1 1/3 cups self-raising flour

2/3 cup plain flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (160 for fan forced)

2. Grease a round cake tin

3. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy

4. Add eggs one at a time

5. Stir in flours, baking soda, cocoa, water and milk

6. Pour into pan and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, but start checking after an hour.

Step 2: Crumble the Cake

You have just invested about one and a half hours making this cake. Now destroy it. Make sure it has cooled sufficiently and then crumble it into small, even sized crumbs.

Step 3: Make a Frosting

I like the word "frosting", it sounds so thick and delicious. You can use whatever recipe you want but I'm fond of a cream cheese frosting. Again, choose whatever flavour you want. I went for a chocolate frosting.

2 x 250 g packets of cream cheese

2 x cups of icing sugar

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

1. Throw the cream cheese in the food processor.

2. Add the icing sugar and the cocoa.

3. Voila. You have a deliciously evil frosting.

Step 4: Mix the Cake Crumbs and the Frosting

It's time to get dirty. Mix the frosting of your choice and the cake crumbs of your choice. Roll into balls (whatever size you want, I went for a golf ball size) and place on a plate (putting down some baking paper prevents stickage). Then put them into the freezer to harden up.

Step 5: Decorate your balls

Some recipes talk about candy melts... I haven't ventured that far into the baking world yet. I used melted chocolate. Some people use white chocolate and add food colouring. I used mostly milk chocolate.

300 g milk chocolate

100 g dark chocolate

I'm a huge dark chocolate fan but the rest of my family isn't, so I snuck some dark chocolate in. I don't think they noticed. 

I melted the chocolate. Using a skewer, I inserted it into the room temperature ball about 1cm. Dipped it into the chocolate and then decorated. I originally used smarties, but when I ran out of smarties I started using chopped nuts. Both looked great. Although you need to work relatively quickly, wait a moment before plonking your smarties onto the chocolaty ball otherwise they slide right off onto your counter (and end up being eaten by the cook). I propped them up in a glass, still on their skewers. You can present them without a stick, but I thought they looked really cute that way.

My brother then arranged them around the room. Both he and I would much prefer to receive a bunch of cake pops over flowers any day. Miss T