Christmas Cake Pops

Joe had a Club Christmas party over the past weekend and volunteered me to make a dessert for about 45 people. I figured making some cake pops would be the best bet because they're simple, one bite desserts, I could make a couple different flavors and I got a new stand for pops/cupcakes that I was dying to use!

These little guys came out really cute and I adore the stand! It also doubles as a cupcake stand by adding the larger separators - and it has a little carrying hook part for your fingers at the top as well, although I transported them in a tupperware then assembled them at the party.

Here were the selections:

Additionally, I had seen a recipe for these Oreo Snowmen. 

Knowing how much Joe likes Oreos I figured I'd make them as well. The problem though with these guys is that the sticks do not fit in between the Oreo cookies. So you therefore have to unscrew each one (hoping not to break them) then carve out a little place for the stick to rest, add some melting chocolate as "glue" and out the top of the cookie back on. All without breaking one side of the cookie. I broke about half a package of cookies trying to do this (which I saved for use in another dessert).

Thankfully before I threw in the towel, Joe stepped in and made them all work, and even put the hats and faces on them after I dipped them in the white chocolate - he seriously saved the day with these and it seems that they were quite popular that night as well. 

To recap: 

Oreos - separated and sealed with melting chocolate and a stick. Let set. 

Dip entire Cookie in white chocolate melts. Let set. 

Dip corner of cookie in a color for the hat, top with M&M candy (I used Mint flavored). Let set. 

Faces: You can do whatever here I used a combination of mini chocolate chips, an orange sprinkle (yes, I plucked out the orange ones from a container of rainbow) and then I used a food coloring marker for the mouth, although I'm sure you could use some melted chocolate as well. 

Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies

My husband goes scuba diving pretty frequently. Whenever he goes, his dive buddy's wife always sends her husband off with enough delicious snacks to feed the entire boat (or at least it seems that way). My hubby is always raving about her cooking, especially her chocolate chip meringue cookies. Which she happen to send on sunday's dive trip. He was kind enough to bring home 2 of them for me to try, and indeed they were quite delicious.

I don't know if you've ever had these little puffs of air before or not, but they're just that puffs, like "air". You could probably eat about 100 of them before getting full. Okay, maybe not 100, but you get the point. Needless to say 2 cookies didn't do it for me yesterday, so off to the kitchen I went to whip up a batch.

The recipe I used is derived from this one here at SpryLiving. Except I modified it as follows:

Ingredients:
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup of sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Instructions: 
1. Preheat oven to 200˚.

2. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar and vanilla extract with electric mixer til soft peaks form. Then gradually add sugar until stiff peaks form.

3. Fold in chocolate chips.

4. Line baking sheet with parchment. Drop dollops of mixture onto parchment or pipe shapes with pastry bag and tip. These cookies will remain in whatever shape they are added to the parchment as. They don't flatten, rise or smooth out or anything. I used a pastry bag with no tip.

My apologies for not taking pics til I put these in the oven, but you really don't need to see a mixer in a bowl right? Here's what they looked like when I put them in the oven:

And here's what they look like when the came out:

In fact I think they were better then following day, once the flavors combined a bit more. You can keep these in an airtight container or ziplock bag for up to a week. Enjoy!

Cake Pops Take 1

The very first time I had a cake pop was about a year ago. This lovely girl I play Derby with, made some, and handed them out at practice one night as a way to promote her cake pop side business - pure genius! Before this moment I had never even heard of cake pops let alone eaten one. It was amazing! To this day it is still the best cake pop I have ever had.

I had to find out how to make them. The following week I began googling recipes for cake pops. If you do this you'll come up with a huge variety of recipes. Since I just wanted to see if this was something I could even conquer, I decided to pick the easiest recipe I could find. It went like this:

1 box of cake mix (any brand)
1/2-1 can of ready to use Icing (any brand)

Choose complementary flavors. For example: Chocolate cake + Chocolate Icing or Carrot cake + Cream Cheese Icing.

In fact Veronica's Cornucpoia was the blog I stumbled upon with the best directions and where I learned how to make cake pops. Thank you Veronica!!!

I made my first few standing up in styrofoam like Veronica suggests, but found it quite difficult. After about 10 (failed) attempts, I decided I'd lay my pops on a baking pan lined with a sheet of parchment. This ended up being the best decision ever. It also makes it much easier when it comes to decorating! Plus, you can always hide the ugly (flat) side by serving the pops in a mini cupcake liner.

Below are images of my second round of cake pops, I made these over 4th of July weekend as we had quite a few parties to go to, and I could bring them with us where ever we went - needless to say, they were a big hit...

Vanilla Cake (dyed pink), Vanilla Icing coated with Vanilla Candy coating:

Carrot Cake, Cream Cheese Icing with Vanilla Candy coating (White & Orange):

Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Candy coating:

Like I said, these cake pops were a huge hit. I think I made everyone I knew have some that weekend. But after spending what turned into DAYS making these, I give my friend a ton of credit starting a cake pop business. It is a ton of effort. Something I don't plan on doing myself, that's for sure. But every once in awhile, when I have some time to kill...Instead of knitting (my usual go-to hobby), I like to make little desserts that look just as good as they taste.