Baby Rattle Cake Pops

 

I attended my first baby shower recently.  A friend of mine, being American, but having been in the UK for much of her adult life, took the opportunity when another friend got pregnant, to organise her first baby shower.  This turned out to be a hilarious evening, and a great american tradition!  

Of course, I couldn't go empty handed, and it was quite obvious what I was going to bring ... cake!  I pondered what kind of cake, and having played with my first set of cake pops not long ago, I thought, aha, baby rattles made from cake pops! Perfect.  The pops were made with cookie dough at one end, and cocktail flavoured cake at the other, mmmm what a treat!

I started off with my lolly sticks, these ones are 4" long and can be bought in any cake decorating store, be that an online one, or a physical one.  

Then I made up a set of lime flavoured sponges.  Two 8" circular sponges will be plenty.  I used a vanilla cake mix and added, zest and juice from a lime.

I next made a batch of egg free cookie dough, from which I made the smaller balls on the bottom of the rattles.  I creamed 220 g of butter and 250 g of caster sugar in a bowl, then added a teaspoon of vanilla essence, and 300g of plain flour, and approximately 50 g of chocolate chips (the chocolate chip measurement is an estimate, I just kept adding until it looked suitably chocolatey! mmmmm) and mixed this all together to form a dough.  

Well who doesn't like cookie dough?? Mmmm, I know I do.  I made small balls, approximately 1" in diameter out of the raw dough and set these on greaseproof paper on a tray as I went.  

I melted 100g of white chocolate cake covering in a bowl in the microwave, stirring every 30-40 seconds to avoid burning.   A few drops of pink food colouring were added to the melt.  This was then used to dip the lolly sticks into, before they were inserted into the dough balls.

 These were left on the baking paper on the tray for a few minutes to set.  I then fully dipped half of the dough balls, up to the lolly stick in the pink chocolate, shook off the excess chocolate, before placing the lolly stick in a block of florists foam, whilst the chocolate set on the dough balls. 

 

Whilst these were put aside to set, I started to make the cake pop mixture.  I took one of my 8" lime sponge cakes, and crumbled it into a large bowl.  For the pink pops, I made up margarita flavour cake pop balls.  To achieve this I added a tablespoon of tequila, and a table spoon of triple sec to the crumbled cake.  I made up a batch of lime flavoured buttercream icing, and added a little at a time, to get a mouldable cake mixture, which was not too mushy to shape.  

Once the mixture was made, I took small handfuls, and shaped them into balls, approximately 2 - 3 inches in diameter.  I took the lolly sticks with the dough balls on the other end, and dipped the stick into the chocolate melt, then pushed the stick into the centre of a cake ball.  These were then placed on a tray and put in the freezer for approximately 5 minutes.  During this time I made sure the pink chocolate dipping mixture was still liquid, and if necessary you can melt some more, if you don't think there will be enough.

Once the 5 minutes chilling was done, they were removed from the freezer and the cake pop was fully dipped into the chocolate melt to cover.  Excess chocolate was shaken off, and I held the pop aloft, until the cold cake mixture had caused the chocolate to set hard enough to put the pop back down on greaseproof paper without leaving a mark.  This took almost no time at all, as the cake centre was so cold.

The finishing touch, was simply a thin piece of ribbon tied around the pop stick to make a bow.  Lovely! 

Once I had finished all of the pink ones, the remaining cookie dough balls were dipped in a second batch of white chocolate cake covering dyed with blue food colouring, and this time, the cake pop was made to be daiquiri flavoured.  I added a few drops of rum flavouring, and lime buttercream to the crumbled second sponge to get this flavour.  All other steps were repeated as with the pink.

They made a great treat, the Mum-to-be loved them, and the other ladies enjoyed them too!  All in all, not a bad experiment! 

Thanks for reading!

Cake Pops and Push Pops

It's my birthday this week, which has meant some brilliant presents, a few of which seemed to have a, ummmm theme.  As you can see in the picture to the left, I got quite a few brilliant, baking goodies!  Aaaand my Mum made me an amazing birthday cake, yoghurt and lemon flavour mmmm, what a treat! 

I also put in an order for some cake decorating bits and bobs last week, which arrived at the weekend.  So all in all, excitement has been running feverishly high, and my creative cake fires have been very heavily fuelled over the last few days.  

I have been really excited about the idea of trying to make cake pops, and having come across the concept of cake push pops, well, that has just GOT to be tried! Don't you think?!  So I bought myself some pop sticks, and some push pop containers, as well as a few decorating extras.  

Happily enough, I am also on annual leave this week, which is brilliant, because I am soooooo very excited to get to work with some of the new things I have acquired. 

Today I used the red velvet cake recipe from my new book.  I made red velvet and cream cheese frosted cake push pops.  And also white chocolate coated cake pops.  These are a friends birthday present.  Perfect for putting in the post!  

Cake Push Pops

Oh my, these are fun!   You can do so much with them!  The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.  You start off with a little plastic push pop container like the picture below.  I bought mine online, but when I went into my local cake decorating shop today , they had them new in (more expensive mind you, but they were there!), so it would seem that they are catching on quick, and available in shops now too.  

I took my baked and ready red velvet sponge, and using one of the pop containers, cut out circles of cake.  These were layered with white cream cheese frosting, piped in, with the top layer of icing swirled as well as I could manage to create a pretty finish.  I then decorated with edible gold glitter and red sugar love heart sprinkles. 

I can't wait to find out how my friend likes them! I think they have made a really cute present, and I just desperately hope that they come out the other end of the postal system still looking cute, and not a complete mess.

Cake Pops

After stumbling across the Bakerella web site a couple of weeks ago, which lead me to making cupcake hamburger meals I have become a little obsessed with her site.  I have been looking at many of the amazing cake pops, and I have been desperate to try some for myself.  

Soooo I went and bought myself some pop sticks in preparation, and when I had my cake offcuts left over from the push pops above, I got to making some!

I crumbled the cake offcuts into a bowl, and added a nice large dollop of the cream cheese frosting, then mixed well.  This created a lovely gooey cake mess, which I then rolled into lollypop sized balls , and left to sit whilst I got everything else ready. 

I melted white chocolate cake covering in my microwave, and got my lollipop sticks stuck into my cake balls, and I got dipping!  Each ball was dipped in the cake covering to coat the whole ball and as little as I could manage of the pop stick (though I must admit I am not the neatest person in the kitchen whilst I'm in the middle of things, and there was a great  deal of runny white chocolate mess going all over the pop sticks, my counters, and well, just about everywhere!).  

I had a handy piece of florists foam block to hand which I was then able to put the  pop sticks into whilst the coating dried.  Soon after removing from the microwave, when the coating was still very warm, some pops needed a second coat after the first had dried, as the coating was so warm and runny it didn't stick on thick enough, once the coating had cooled some though the others went on thicker.

Once the coat on the pops was thick enough I started decorating them.  I chose three different types of decoration.  Sugar love hearts, hundreds and thousands and gold edible glitter.  The love hearts and the hundreds and thousands had to be added whilst the coating was drying, to make sure they would stick.  But the gold glitter I simply applied with a dry paintbrush once the pops were solid.

They came out so much better than my expectations had been, and looked so cute, that I located some little plastic gift bags and ribbon, and they have gone in the birthday box for my friend as well.  Again, I really hope they don't get too bashed, and they arrive still looking good! 

I had a great afternoon's baking, and I'm so glad I got to do some experimenting!  I can't wait to try some more complicated cake pop designs.  There are just so many things that you can do with these!  I might be lead astray from my giant crazy cakes for a while with the thousands of possibilities!   


But another day, as for now it is time I went to get some beauty sleep.  Thanks for reading, please feel free to post any questions or comments.


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