Cake Pops- Round 1

The other day, my friend and I decided to try to make cake pops. When someone describes them, don't they seem easy?

1. Make round balls.
2. Shove stick in.
3. Submerge in candy melts.
4. Voila! Beautiful cake pop.

............Wrong. 

Let me tell ya, they weren't as easy as I thought they were going to be. Don't let those pics up top there deceive you. Out of about 25 balls, we only got a few cute ones. I even prepped by watching tons of YouTube videos and reading recipes before making them. Well, they didn't help with these. I want to specifically reference this blog post Cake Pops Are Not Easy because she describes how the first attempt at making cake pops doesn't go as well as one may hope. Our results were the same to the T. For example: the pops falling off the sticks and into the candy melts, producing a "crumby" candy coating that wasn't cute at all. Not to mention the sprinkles we accidentally got in it. Note to self: don't decorate over your bowl of candy melts... That is if you can even get the melts to a good consistency in the first place.

So, here are some of the pics from our trial and error cake pop baking:

 

L: Look at that adooorable packaging for the sticks!

R: Easy (cheap) way to take pops on the go- solo cup! 

L: Heart molds! Cute but waaay too heavy for dipping 

and not wide enough to put the stick in very well.

R: Pink=cake pop maker (weird UFO shapes), Yellow=hand molded.

Baking Tip #8: So many things went wrong while we were making these. The biggest being that the balls (hey! get your mind outta the gutter!) kept falling off the sticks. Now, we did do one thing right in that we coated the tip of the stick before shoving it into the bottom of the ball. Though, make sure you don't dip all of the sticks in one color and then try to cover it with other colors, it doesn't work. Trust me. I don't know if it was because some of the balls were too small or we didn't let them sit long enough to harden or we didn't use enough candy melt on the end of the stick. It was probably a combo of all. Either way, most of our cake pops were lopsided because they started to come off of the stick (or completely did, thus creating the "crumby candy melts") or the coating was too heavy for them. We did make them two ways, a cake pop maker (the pink balls) and the cake crumbles + frosting (the yellow balls). I think the cake pop maker didn't make them as solid inside and a little small so they didn't hold the candy melts as well and the other balls did. Though, neither were perfect.

Baking Tip #9: Another (among many) problem was that our candy melts just weren't working for us. First of all, the bowl we melted them in wasn't deep enough to dip the cake ball in. So, make sure you use a deep enough bowl that allows you to dip the entire ball into it. That way, you can submerge the pop and rock it back and forth in the melts to coat the whole thing (don't swirl it around, that's what makes it fall off). Once we switched to a deeper bowl, we were able to dip the whole thing in, but when it came to getting the excess liquid off, that didn't work either. I think we never got the melts hot enough so it wasn't thin enough to drip off and hardened really quickly. I've seen it done two ways: microwave and double boiler. I tried the microwave and it was okay, but next time I'm going to try the double boiler. What's there to lose in trying a different approach? Nothing!!

It was still A LOT of fun [and work] making the pops. Everyone at work loved them even if they weren't the most beautiful things ever. I can't wait to attempt Round 2!! They'll be better then, right??? Oh, and one last quick question, how do you devour your cake pop?

Until later,
Baker in Training

My Resolution: Bake More!

Though my real resolution is to eat more cupcakes get abs, I don't quite know how realistic that is. So, I want to bake more (and Ryan interjects- cook more!). I think this is more achievable, not to mention is the opposite of getting abs, because it requires zero physical effort, unless you count the arm pain that follows holding an electric mixer up for five minutes straight trying to get a fluffy icing. I've baked a good amount, but not quite enough. I've mainly been focusing on cupcakes/frosting, but hopefully I can branch out to others, i.e. cake pops, decorated cookies, fondant creations, etc.

I started out the first of the year with, brace yourself, a STIFFish FROSTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Talk about a good sign. Here it is:

As you can see, it's still not the amazing fluffy stuff you see at professional baking places. I'm most envious of those who compete on Cupcake Wars. They make it perfect everytime! I brought these beautiful cupcakes to work and of course I was berated because, "Bleighton!!! We're all on diets!". To which I replied, "Don't worry, they're calorie and sugar free.... ;)". Yeah right, I wish. They still ate them, though. Including myself with no abs and all.

I used the same recipe I've been using this whole time, I just added more and more powdered sugar. I think the recipe called for 4 cups... I put 8. I was crossing my fingers, hoping it wasn't going to give me a toothache from being too sweet. But, to my surprise, it wasn't! The other change I made this time was adding heavy cream. Milk is much too runny and even though I didn't add any to the second batch that was still not stiff, it didn't turn out the way I wanted. So, adding the heavy whipping cream made a HUGE difference. Next time, since I finally bought it, I'm going to use crisco. Some people have told me that they use both crisco and butter, so I'm going to try it.

Now, this one may shock you, but I just realized that I'm not using butter when I make my frosting. Sure, I'm using something that looks like butter, tastes like butter, smells like butter, but truly isn't butter. That could be THE biggest reason why my frosting has been lacking in fluffiness. Unless someone can enlighten me and let me know that it's just fine to use it!!! We've always had the tub-o-butter [margarine] in our fridge.

Not once in my life have I not called it butter or used it when recipes called for butter. Though, we do buy the butter sticks in the summer for corn on the cob, duh! Deep down I knew it wasn't "real" butter, but I used it anyway because it had become habit to use.

Thus, I come to my point- Baking Tip #7: "For baking and cooking: Butter is the best for baking, because its high fat content (80% fat) yields the best results, such as tenderness and flakiness. Whipped butter or butter-oil spreads will not give you the same results as butter, so do not use them in your baking -- though they may be fine for most cooking." (Article Here) Double check your ingredients. This may sound dumb, sometimes I am, but make sure you have what the recipe calls for. The fact that I haven't had been able to make a fluffy, delicious frosting could be because I've been using this imposter butter. Now, I like margarine so I will continue to use it when cooking and maybe in some cake mixes, but after I try it with my frosting next time and it turns out perfect, I probably won't use it ever again to make it.

What's your New Year Resolution? Are you still sticking with it?

(I am!)

Until later,

Baker in Training