Cake Pops Again

The kids and I had a great time decorating the little monkeys and chicks the last time we made cake pops. So when a friend's birthday was on the horizon, I asked her if she wanted cake pops for her birthday treat. And, lucky for us, she said yes! This time around was a bit more difficult, though, because we were trying to eleminate as much of the dairy as possible to accomodate my friend's dairy intolerance.

I started with a dairy free cake, which turned out beatifully. I then broke part of the cake up into small crumbs. Since I was trying to eleminate as much of the dairy as possible, I omitted the frosting that usually gets mixed into the cake. (In hind sight I realize I should not have omitted this step. I should have mixed in something else that was dairy free like jam to give the cake crumbs extra moisture.) I then rolled the cake crumbs into balls and put them in the freezer for about an hour to harden. Meanwhile I melted about half of a bag of dark cocoa candy melts in a glass bowl in the microwave in 30 second intervals at half power. After the cake balls were frozen I took a paper lollipop stick, dipped the tip of the stick into melted candy melts and tried to put the stick into the cake ball. Unfortunately the drier nature of the dairy free cake without any moisture ammendments made this part very tricky. Most of my cake balls split when I tried to put them on a stick. I did my best to hold the ball together while spooning a bit of candy around the bottom of the ball next to the stick and onto any large cracks I noticed. I then, set these aside to let the candy harden before moving on with covering the rest of the cake ball. The crumbliness of the cake also led to lumpy candy as cake bits often dropped into the candy. So, I didn't get any smooth cake pops this time around, but we improvised and tried to make the lumpy cake pops work for us.

The kids and I decided to make roosters and cats out of our dark cocoa cake pops, which I think turned out fairly nice considering the circumstances of their creation.  We used large heart sprinkles for the roosters' comb and small heart sprinkles for the beak. A small heart sprinkle made the cat nose and small confetti sprinkles were eyes. Chocolate chips were the cats' ears.

I think the next time we make these I'll definitely add in some frosting or jam and will let each bit of candy coating harden before moving on to the next step. So I'll dip the stick in candy and put the cake ball on it, then let it sit before moving on to the next step. Patience is the key to these treats, I'm beginning to realize. But no matter how they look, they always taste very yummy!