Cake Pops!

Okay, so everyone who has ever been on any baking blog or website has heard of Bakerella and her cake pops. If they haven't, they should have. She - and they - are awesome.

So I was inspired to try out some of my own, and I decided to make mice. Now I must say, I fully expected this to be a debacle of massive proportions. But in the event, it was actually easier than I thought it would be. It did take some time, but weirdly enough, the hardest part was finding the lollipop sticks. I ended up having to order them online. Are you listening, Australian retailers???

Anyway...

Firstly, the balls themselves are just crumbled cake mixed with frosting...


...which is then rolled into balls...


... before having a stick inserted, some freezer time, and in this case a choc chip added to each one (to create the shape of the mouse's snout)...


Then each pop has some more freezer time, before being dipped quickly into white chocolate. I also added a pink cachou to each little nose...

... as well as carefully-cut-up white melts for the ears, and pink chocolate tails (which I had piped onto baking paper and refrigerated until hard), all by gluing on with more white chocolate.

Finally, I tried my hand at drawing faces on with an edible marker, but I have this to say on that topic: either the brand of marker Bakerella uses is significantly better than the brand I have, or I am just really rubbish at drawing with it. Seriously. I gave up after drawing two mouths, and quickly melted a bit of dark chocolate to make the eyes. In future I'll stick with my piping bag.

And that's it - enjoy! If you are interested in trying these out for yourself, I highly recommend you visit Bakerella's site for more detailed instructions (although I used a lot less frosting than she does - probably just a difference in cake density, as you can use any cake you like).

Also, I must admit I wasn't really expecting to enjoy the taste of these all that much - it looked to me as though they were going to be tremendously overly sweet. But they actually weren't - they were yummy!