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!

Meaty Man Pasta

or Pasta alla Marlboro Man (compliments of the Pioneer Woman).

I saw this recipe on Pdub's website and thought, that sounds good and looks easy. And I'll even do her TWO better; I'll use whole wheat pasta and ground turkey. My advice, stick to the normal recipe or really know how to doctor it up.
Ingredients:
2 tbs olive oil
2 lbs ground beef
1/2 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 generous tsp ground thyme
2 14-oz cans whole tomatoes
1/4 c freshly grated parmesan cheese
1 1/2 to 2 lbs rigatoni

Instructions:

1. First, heat olive oil in large skillet or pot over medium-low heat. Add onion and cook a couple minutes, until starting to turn translucent. Add garlic and stir, cooking 1 minute, making sure not to brown the garlic.
2. Next, add ground beef and cook until brown. Drain most of the excess fat. Add salt, pepper, and ground thyme. Stir to combine.
3. Now dumb in the canned tomatoes with their juice. Stir, reduce heat to low, and cover pot. Cook for 30 minutes, stirring a couple of times. Uncover the pot and cook an additional 30 minutes.
4. Cook rigatoni according to package directions - don't overcook! Drain and place individual portions into bowls.
5. Stir in 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated parmesan into the sauce. Check and adjust seasonings. Ladle sauce over cooked pasta, sprinkle with more parmesan, and serve.

I'm pretty sure it was the ground turkey that threw things off and not the whole wheat pasta...

Again, I suck at getting a picture of the completed product. Sorry. You'll just have to go visit the Pioneer Woman's page to see her delicious dish.

Mini Muffin Cookies

The Ingredients:

When it comes to the ingredients, the sky is the limit. Use whatever kind of cookie dough and mini candies you think would work together. In this case, an assortment of reese's, rolos and kisses with chocolate chip and peanut butter cookie doughs.

The Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Remove the wrapper from the cookie dough and slice into 1" to 1 1/2" slices. Take those slices, flip them on their side and cut them into quarters.
Put the quartered pieces into greased mini muffin tins. Put the tins into the oven for 6 to 8 minutes.

While the dough is in the oven, unwrap your candies. See that lovely assortment. I've even made these cookies with mini snickers. That was good!
Look at those beauties! Don't worry, magic does not happen and they do not come out of the oven with the candy in place. Remove the tins from the oven when the dough is slightly golden brown. Once out of the oven, immediately put the candy into the dough. Just a little push into the dough is good. You want it in, but not forced. Let the cookies cool a little bit. Use a spoon to remove from the tins.
Pile high just to watch it all disappear. You'll notice there are lighter, not as golden brown, cookies. Make sure they're golden brown. The more "raw" they are the harder they are to get out of the tin. Trust me with this one!
I tube of cookie dough makes about 3 to 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

Go forth, make these cookies and use your imagination mixing and matching dough to candy.

Let me know what you find to be a good combination!

I made these cookies when Kaitlin was home last weekend. She took just about all of them back to camp with her. She was afraid that she'd eat most of them on her drive back, so she put them in the trunk.

Recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.