Cake Pops are In

I wanted to make my boyfriend and my brother, awesome birthday cakes, but I know sending a cake in the mail from Las Vegas to Alaska or Las Vegas to New Jersey, was not going to look like a cake when it got there, so I had to come up with a solution to get something to them since I wasn't going to be able to be there to help them celebrate. Then I remembered the new trend....cake pops. I used to always wonder how cake pops were made because they were so cute. I tried buying the cake pop maker, but that just made little doughnut hole type things and they never tasted like the cake pops that I would eat out places. After some research, I realized I was making them all wrong. If you don't know how to make them, the simple way is to make a cake, any flavor that you like, make a batch of icing, in the flavor that you prefer (a half of a batch of icing would probably be more than enough) and get some chocolate melts that you can find at your local Walmart or any craft store by the cake decorationg supplies and that's all you need.

When the cake is cool, crumble it up and mix it with the icing, little by little until there's enough icing that turns the crumbs into a sticky dough like texture. Then you can start rolling balls like you would if you were making meatballs, put them on a tray of parchment paper and pop them in the freezer for 15-20 minutes until they're firm and wont fall apart.

Get a stick, ones that you can find with all the candy making stuff, and stick one in each ball. I've learned that it helps if you put a little icing on the end of the stick before you insert it in the ball and then put it in the fridge for a few minutes to set. It keeps the ball from falling off the stick when it comes time to coating it in the chocolate. I've found it helpful to cut those sticks is in half if you get the long ones.



If you can't find the sticks or just want to make them look like little candies, you can make them into just cake balls like I did and put them in the little paper cups and make them look fancy.






While the balls are firming up, get some melting chocolate coins and microwave them to melt them (see instructions on package). Make sure they're melted enough because if the chocolate isn't soft enough, it can break apart your cake ball.

There's so many good flavor combinations out there, that it was hard to pick one to make and I knew they each liked different things. So what does any good girlfriend/sister do? I make a few different flavors and send them a few of each. Who doesn't like a variety? I ended up making:  

-carrot cake with cream cheese icing, which are the orange ones pictured above with the little bit of green sugar on top and the orange white chocolate coating to represent a carrot
 -pumkin spice which were a pumpkin cake with some of the leftover cream cheese icing and covered in orange white chocolate melts that were pumpkin spice flavored. They didn't melt as smooth as regular chocolate melts, but they still were delicious
-birthday cake which were yellow cake with sprinkles and a vanilla buttercream and white speckled chocolate melts
-peanut butter/chocolate which were a peanut butter cake with peanut butter buttercream and covered with milk chocolate melts
-smores (they were the favorite) which were a chocolate cake with a marshmallow buttercream, covered in milk chocolate melts and rolled in graham cracker crumbs

These weren't hard to make at all, they're just a little time consuming. They're also great if you accidently overcooked your cake and it's a bit dry, nobody will ever notice when they're turned into cake pops.