Cake Pops

This holiday season I was introduced to cake pops - a highly addictive and easy to make treat.  My husband came home from work one day praising a new sweet he had tasted at work.  A wife of one of his co-workers had made the cake pops and my husband was relentless to get the recipe.  I'm glad he did... sort of...I've put on a few pounds because of these.

Clearly I took the liberty to use a lot of chocolate, which is why my cake pop is sporting a crew cut.  They're supposed to be completely round. Some people decorate them to look like Rudolf the red nose reindeer (here).

Here's a peek at the inside of the cake pops...

The above cake pop is made with funfetti cake.

This one is made with red velvet cake.  Me like-y a lot!

Here's how I made mine:

Ingredients

• Cake mix or make your own cake from scratch.  So far, I have made cake pops with pumpkin cake, red velvet cake mix and funfetti cake mix.
• Cream cheese frosting or make your own from scratch (mix powdered sugar with cream cheese until it taste like frosting).
• Dipping Chocolate
• Paper Sucker Sticks
• Wax Paper

Directions

1. Bake the cake by following the box directions or your own if making from scratch.
2. When the cake has cooled, crumble the cake into small crumbs in a bowl with your hands.  The cake mixture should be fine.
3. Using a rubber spatula, mix in cream cheese frosting a 1/2 cup at a time.  Mix in enough cream cheese frosting until the cake mixture is moist enough to roll 1" balls.  You probably wont need to use all of the cream cheese frosting.  
4. Roll 1" balls out of the mixture and place them on a wax paper lined pan (jelly roll pan or cookie sheet). 
5. Stick the sticks into the center of the balls.  Freeze for about 15 minutes.
6. Prepare the melting chocolate by following the instructions on the bag.  I melt mine in the microwave by heating and stirring in 30 second intervals until the chocolate has melted.
7. Dip the pops and cover them with chocolate.  Let the excess drip off (I usually skip this part).
8. Place the pops back onto the wax paper with the stick facing up.  Let it cool.

That's it!

After Googling cake pops it turns out there are a couple of cake pop cook books and a Martha Stewart appearance.  I have not had the opportunity to flip through the cook books, but I imagine there's a whole new cake pop world out there waiting for me to explore.

Cheers,

Jamie