Cake pops and related news

Last weekend Amy and I had an order to make a cake for a graduation party.  A huge two-tiered thing to feed 75 people.  Covered in fondant.  With tiger stripes.

I was in charge of baking the chocolate tier, and when the cake had cooled I trimmed off the domed tops to make the layers level.  So I had a big pile of scraps.  Delicious scraps.  So I ate a few handfuls, but still had a lot leftover.  And, as luck would have it, I also happened to have some leftover peanut butter frosting from some amazing peanut butter cup cupcakes I'd made.  And I thought, "Cake pops!"

I've seen cake pops everywhere in the blogosphere, but had never attempted them.  When you read the directions for making cake pops, they literally start with, "1) Bake a cake. 2) Frost cake. 3) Smash cake until it's mush."  Then the directions proceed to tell you to form the cake/frosting mush into balls, insert sucker sticks, freeze, then dip into some sort of coating and decorate.  Well, I feel that ruining a perfectly good cake just to make cake pops (which is a process that, depending on how elaborately the pops are decorated, can be a ridiculous amount of work) is a huge waste.  So I had written off cake pops.  As in, they were never going to happen.


That was before I found myself looking at a glorious pile of chocolate cake pieces that would probably go to waste.  So I mashed up some cake scraps with that peanut butter frosting, etc., etc.  And last night when we had some friends and their kids over, I pulled those frozen balls out of the freezer, dipped them in melted chocolate (leftover from more of those peanut butter cup cupcakes...which are amazing, by the way) and let the kids dip them in sprinkles or nuts.  And they were delicious.

And adorable.  I tried to snap a picture before Mason ate his.  "Wait, Mason!  Hang on a second!"




























 "Hold it out for me!"

Forget this, Mom.


































Oh, and that cake Amy and I made for the graduation party?  Yeah, it turned out awesome.  It was the first fondant-covered cake we've done.  Um, and the last.  The powdered sugar aftermath in Amy's kitchen was horrendous.

All in the name of cake.