A little help goes a long way

I recently bought the Babycakes Chocolatier at the local Kohls. I had wandered in over a week ago looking for a double boiler. Unfortunately, they had none and I stumbled upon the section of Babycakes products and seen the chocolatier. I did another look around for a double boiler just incase I had missed one. Then I went back and stared at the box, opened the box, looked inside and placed the box back on the shelf. After a few seconds I decided to get it.

I placed the candy melts inside and plugged it in. It took a while for them to melt, around 30 minutes.

After I got the right consistency I was ready to dunk the cake balls in. I liked how it kept the chocolate warm and I didn't have to worry about it getting too thick. I did remove the ceramic pot from the base before I did my dunking. I noticed it was too hot if I just left it in the base. Since I had my cake balls in the refrigerator I had to take them out 5 minutes prior or I would have horribly cracked cake pops.

Here is a close up of one of the cracked cake pops. I had 3 of these in the second batch I made.

The first batch of cake pops I made were red velvet and covered in sprinkles. These didn't crack. I read online that air bubbles can cause cracking and I think the sprinkles helped prevent air bubbles in the chocolate.

My second batch of cake pops were vanilla flavored. I did a cute design with butterflies that I made from a chocolate mold.

I made the cake pops for a 5 year-old's birthday party. She adored them and they were a huge success.

Cake Pop Maker

A few weeks back I had an order for 100 cake pops. Luckily, it got reduced to 30 pieces but before that happened I decided to get a lil help. I went online and found the Tasty Top Cake Pop Maker from Amazon.com. It was a few dollars cheaper and included free shipping compared to if I were to get it from the actual website. I tried it today and baked some red velvet balls. I wasn't impressed. After baking, some of the balls weren't too round and the taste was boring. I prefer the old fashioned way using frosting. I have an order this week for 50 cake pops but I decided to ditch this cake pop maker and make it the original way. I might use this again if I have to make a huge order but it's too late to get my money back...hahaha!

This is what the cake pop maker looks like. I just took them out of the oven.

This is what it looks like after I removed the top.

Unfortunately, I wasn't impressed with the shape. Most weren't round enough and I didn't like the texture.

After popping them out of the mold there were excess on the sides. It looks funny but it sure was a fun experience.

The Summer Heat

I had two cake pop orders to do and the California heat was not helping me one bit. Also my home doesn't have air conditioning so I was having a difficult time making them. The chocolate was not setting and the cake pops were falling off the stick! So I decided that every time I dipped a cake pop in chocolate I would immediately put it in the refrigerator to set. My legs were not happy from going back and forth, that's for sure.

But there was a huge downfall from putting them in the refrigerator. I didn't know that it condenses and all my cake pops were sweating. So from this experience I learned it isn't wise to put cake pops in the refrigerator...hahaha. Seventy-five cake pops later!

Cake Pops with a blue butterfly detail

Cake Pops with a red flower detail

Cute baby shower cake pops

All cake pops were red velvet flavored.

Neon Cake

Lately I've been having bad luck with making cake pops. I think the cake pops had too much frosting and ended up being so soft that it fell off the stick. When I decided to go for Round 2 I decided to melt my chocolate candy melts in the microwave and some how burned them! It certainly wasn't my day for cake pops. Since I had some red velvet cake left over I decided to make a layered cake. Luckily, I had baked them in six-inch cake pans and I had enough for 2 thin layers. I decided to go nuts and baked some chocolate cake so I could make a 4 layer cake. I had some leftover cream cheese frosting and added some rum extract that I bought on a whim from the local Food-4-Less.




Then I made some vanilla buttercream frosting. I was debating over using green or blue food coloring and ended up using green. A few drops of the icing color gel and a nice light green color came out. It was a struggle to frost this cake since I didn't put it in the refrigerator. Note to self: let cake cool in the refrigerator before frosting. The buttercream didn't adhere to the cake on the sides because of the filling pooling out but oh well, I made it!

With some whimsical neon orange piping this cake came out pretty cute. Not bad for a practice cake. It was too cute to eat so I ended up giving it to a friend. Haha!