Cake Pops

Since buying the Molly Bakes Cake Pops with my xmas money I have been desperate to try and make cake pops. The idea just sounded amazing - cute little mouthfuls of decorated cake on sticks. I spent quite alot of time flicking through the book, looking at all the different designs and memorising the different steps involved. I couldn't wait to make them!

However, my enthusiam slightly decreased after a having a read on other peoples blogs about their difficulties making Cake Pops...I must admit the first thing that popped into my head was cake on sticks - seriously...how hard can it be??? I was soon to find out....

I decided to just stick with a simple pop design - no fancy moulding the dough into shapes for me. I bought a huuuge amount of candy melts but for my first attempt thought I would go with the cheaper alternative of using white chocolate - the book said this was perfectly acceptable! I decided that I would make the pops in stages over the week I was off work. So on the Monday I set to and baked the vanilla cake - nothing eventful here - it all went to plan. Tuesday I made a lovely cream cheese frosting, crumbled my cake up and made a dough - still all going to plan. Wednesday I rolled the dough into lots of little balls and put them in the fridge to chill - again all going to plan.

By the time I got to Thursday I was seriously thinking that cake pops were super easy to make - perhaps I was even feeling slightly cocky that I'd managed to get so far with no mishaps. Well Thursday was the day for dipping - I melted my white chocolate, found my lolly sticks in the cupboard and started turning my balls of cakes into actual cake pops!! I was still super excited at this point. However, it all went down hill from here. I kinda allowed myself an hour to get the pops coated in chocolate - totally underestimated on the time front there. It took me about 15 minutes to do 2. My face fell as I noticed the other 23 pops that needed dipping in the next 45 minutes!

The problem was that the book just said to dip the pop into the chocolate or candy melts - shake slightly and then stand the pop up in a polystyrene block. I had a series of problems with this method - some of the pops would just fall straight off their sticks as soon as I so much waved them near the bowl of chocolate, others would survive the dip but as soon as I shook them would launch themselves back into the chocolate minus the stick! When I finally thought I'd done a successful one, I'd shake it slightly and then go to stand it up and all of the chocolate would just pour down the stick. I ended up having to wait for aaaages just holding the pop over the bowl waiting for the chocolate to set a bit but even then I still got serious dripping down the stick that I had to wipe up! I re read the instructions over and over again and could seriously not figure out what I was doing wrong.

Anyway after about 8 attempts I got so frustrated and gave up..I just didn't have the time to dip all 25 of the cake pops! AND to top it off when me and Karl sat down to eat a few of the cake pops he didn't even like them and I was a bit of the opinion that if I'm going to put that much time and effort into something it needs to taste AMAZING! I said that evening that I am never ever going to make them again - however I may have to retract that statement since there are 2 bags of lolly sticks and 4 bags of candy melts in my cupboard and I hate wasting things!

Maybe it will be easier the 2nd time round...fingers crossed!!!







PS On a more positive note this was the first time I got to use my rose mould that I bought from Neit Moulds and I absolutely loved it. This company sell moulds of pretty much anything! It was so easy to use and my sugar paste didn't stick in it once..fab!