Cake Pop

Ahhh...Cake Pops... My new favorite form of, well, cake!

I first learned of these little mysterious treats from the Pioneer Woman. She made some cutesy little cake pops for Halloween. But come to find out, Ree wasn't the "creator" of cake pops. She got the recipe from Bakerella. Visit her site. It's amazing! She can pretty much create anything out of a little ball of cake.

Here's the clincher... Bakerella visited Pioneer Woman at her ranch and had a fun filled day of making cake pops. Man I wish I could have been there!

So you know what I had to do. Yep, try to make them myself!

The ingredients: One box of cake mix (bake according to directions) and one tub of frosting.
"They" all recommend red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I was daring (and feeling a bit springy) and used lemon cake with cream cheese frosting.

Make the cake. Let it completely cool (I left it out overnight). Crumble the cake into a large bowl. And when I say crumble, I mean crumble. Watch the edges and corners, they take a little more work.
Add 3/4 of the tub of frosting, mixing it completely with the cake crumbs. Add more frosting if you need to. I'll be honest, I used the whole frickin' tub. I would recommend chilling the "dough" at this point. I did not. Wish I did though cause it would have made forming the balls a little easier.

Roll your balls about the size of a quarter (your should get around 50 pops). Place them on parchment paper (or in my case since I didn't have parchment paper I used nonstick foil).

You're going to want to melt a little bit of melting chocolate (found at a store like Michael's). Dip the end of the lollipop stick (also found at Michael's) into the chocolate then into the ball. This will help it stay in later.

Now you have 2 options here:
1. Stick the stick in before you place the ball on the parchment. or
2. Stick the stick in after you've placed the ball on the parchment. Be warned though, adding that little pressure with slightly flatten the ball. I know this because that's how I did it.
Put your cookie tray or whatever is hold the cake pops on into the freezer. You want them nice and chilled before the next step.

Find yourself a nice little bowl that is narrow and deep. Melt the chocolate in 15-30 second intervals in the microwave, stirring in between. Oh! And you'll need a hunk of styroform or something to stand the cake pops in to dry.

Once you're ready start dippin'. I had some sprinkles that I used too.
And this is what you get! A cake pop! (insert ohhhs and awwwws here)
So the real question is...
How many bites does it take to get to the center of a cake pop?
one...two...
three. Crunch!
I can't wait to make them again and experiment with other flavors!