Cake pops recipe

Cake pops are the new macaroons which were the new cupcakes, or something. Anyway they are super easy to make and very delicious to eat.



Credit: BBC

Here is the recipe for cake pops from our July meeting.

Ingredients:
Cake: this recipe uses 1 chocolate sponge made in a loaf tin, but this could be replaced with any sponge or fruit cake. You can either make a cake or buy a ready made sponge (shh no one will ever know).

Icing: this recipe uses chocolate fudge butter icing but you could use any thick, spreadable icing or frosting. Again you could make your own or buy ready made.

Chocolate, melted: we used white chocolate.

Sticks: we used white chocolate Mikados but you could use lollipop sticks or candy sticks. In fact Mikados turned out to be a bit unsuccessful with warm hands as they snapped so don't use them!

Decoration: sprinkles, sparkles, whatever takes your fancy

Method

1. Bake cake and leave to cool completely. Or take cake out of packaging!

2. Cut crusts off of cake. This will ensure there are no lumps in your finished cake pops.

3. Crumble the sponge into a bowl. The finer the sponge the better. You could use a food processor to do this, your hands or a knife.

4. Add a tablespoon of icing to the sponge crumbs and mix with your hands. Keep adding one spoonful of icing at a time until the mixture comes together in a dough like consistency and forms one large ball. Too little icing and the mixture won't hold together, too much and it will be sloppy. This is a crucial stage!

5. Refrigerate for at least half an hour.

6. Now roll ping pong sized balls of cake mixture and place onto a lined baking sheet.

7. Refrigerate for at least half an hour.

8. Break the white chocolate into an oven proof bowl and put into the microwave on 20 second blasts until melted. Be careful not to over cook or the chocolate will separate.

9. Put a blob of melted chocolate on the end of a stick and push into a cake ball. Do this for each cake ball and leave the chocolate to dry. This will only take a minute or so and the chocolate will act like glue to hold the stick in place.

10. Now dip each cake ball into the melted chocolate ensuring an even coverage. Stand the cake pop upright to dry - you could use a cup, jam jar, floristry oasis, whatever you have to hand.

11. Before the chocolate dries add your decorations. For inspiration google 'cake pops' there are hundreds of pages of inspiration. If in doubt hundreds and thousands look quite nice.

12. Sit back, feel smug at your baking wonder and eat cake pops.