Tasty Thursdays

I've decided to christen Thursdays Tasty Thursdays in order to share some of my favourite recipes and treats. For my first Tasty Thursday, I'm going to share something I made last summer at uni with one of my volunteers.

Cake pops (from Bakerella)

As you can see from the website linked above, you can get really creative with your cake pops, depending on your skill and patience. For our first attempt though, we decided to keep it simple!

The finished product

You will need:

• Sponge cake (we used ready-made plain sponge cake from the supermarket, but you could make your own in whatever flavour you fancy)
• Buttercream icing (Again, we were lazy and used ready-made plain buttercream icing/frosting, but like before you can make your own in whatever flavour you like)
•  Decorations: chocolate, icing pens etc
• Kebab sticks/lollipop sticks
• Something you can use to stand the sticks in (we found a chunk of polystyrene which worked quite well)

Instructions: 

1. Chop up the sponge cake into chunks and combine it with the buttercream icing - you're aiming for a mouldable consistency which isn't too wet.

Me chopping the cake (with ridiculously frizzy hair, sorry!)

2. Mould into balls and spear on a stick, using a touch of melted chocolate (whatever type you're using to coat the entire pop). We used the non-pointy end of the kebab stick so we could use the pointy end to stand them in the polystyrene.

3. Chill. We were impatient so shoved them in the freezer for 20 minutes or so, and they seemed to be okay.

4. Decorate. We melted some white chocolate in a shallow bowl to coat them and then drizzled some milk chocolate on some for a marbled effect. We also used icing pens to decorate. The weight of the chocolate is sometimes an issue at this point, so keep your fingers crossed they stay on the sticks, as we had a few casualties!

Starting to decorate

Happy cake pop!

Cake pop casualty :(

Punk!

Happy baking!