Monday 6 December 2010

What I've been up to ...

You may have noticed, over in my sidebar, there's a link to a wonderful site (and person) called Bakerella. She makes the cutest little things called cake pops and I, having oodles of spare time (snort!), decided to give them a go.

My first attempt was at the (what I thought were) easier version called cupcake bites. (Having now made both kinds, I think the pops were the easier of the two; especially when dipping them in the chocolate!)


And then the Christmas Pops:

All packaged up and ready to go!

Frosty the Snowman
Rudolph
Christmas pudding

I cheated a bit (OK, a lot!) and used store-bought mud cakes for the centres. Woolies sell lovely mud cakes in three different flavours and the cost is very reasonable (less than it would cost to make them myself!) I used white mudcake balls for the snowmen, chocolate mudcake balls for the Christmas puddings and caramel mudcake balls for the reindeer. A little handy hint: when you crumble the mudcake before rolling it into cake balls, make sure you crumble in the icing too. I didn't do that with the first batch and they dried out and crumbled a bit before I could dip them all.

They are a bit fiddly to make, especially when you have to keep smacking boys' hands away from the decorating ingredients bowls, but are oh so much fun! And the looks on people's faces when presented with the finished product makes the work worthwhile.

I did find we are slightly more limited in our choice of decorating bits and pieces than our US counterparts but managed to find suitable substitutes for most things. I haven't yet attempted colouring chocolate (and I refuse to pay the $10 + per 200g bag for the pre-coloured choc melts off the internet) but as I have now finished working at the school for the year, I may give it a go soon. I'll keep you posted!
And yes ... they tasted as good (better even!) as they looked!

1 comment:

Nic said...

they looked too good to eat but when we did, were delicious.. thanks for bringing them, they were a hit..