my cake pop adventure

this weekend, i made this:

it looks like ice cream and tastes like cake... and it's only three inches tall!

it was part of my first attempt at cake pops, which is something i swore i'd never get into making. i've known about them for a long time, and i never really saw what the big deal was.

for those that don't know, cake pops are smashed up cake mixed with icing and dipped in chocolate, and usually put on a lollipop stick. it's a very simple thing that can be endlessly varied by flavor and decoration. they are cute and portable. they're popular with kids, and great for theme parties, because you can use any color candy melt to coordinate. or, if you have lots and lots of time on your hand, you can make your pops look like animals or flower or anything else you can think of.

honestly, they fall into the category of highly decorated cookies in my opinion. they're very pretty to look at, and i like to read about them, but they're not something i have time to devote to. and they seem like the kind of thing that take lots of time to get perfect, especially if you're obsessive like me.

but then i found this recipe, which looked delicious and easy. and so i decided to try it. but the recipe said that there would be a bunch of cake mix left over, so i wanted to think of a clever way to use it up. and we happen to have those mini ice cream cones hanging around for a very long time, and i decided that making cake pop ice cream would be a cute and fun way of using up them up too.

because this isn't really a food blog (though i know i talk about food enough) i really don't have fun, step by step pictures of the process i used. but if you follow the steps in the other recipe, you can start from the part where i have a bunch of cake mixed with icing, chilling in the fridge. i rolled out balls of the mix, and dipped them in melted chocolate. really, it wasn't chocolate, it was chocolate flavored candy melts, which melt easily and set quickly but don't taste quite as nice as the real stuff. if i had more time (and energy) i would have used good chocolate.

so after i had chocolate covered cake balls, i stuck them on the mini ice cream cones and quickly sprinkled on the sprinkles and stuck on the pretzel m&m, which i used because it's nice and round so it kind of looks like a cherry. i let them set up on the counter and that was that.

if you ever do decided to attempt to recreate this, let me say that sticking the cake ball on the cone and then dipping the top in chocolate was much easier. i started that process halfway through and it worked out much better. and i'm thinking that if i had dipped the top of the cone in the chocolate before i put the cake ball on, it would have held the ball on even better.

all in all, i think these treats look really cute. and they weren't as involved as i thought they'd be to make. still, now that i've actually made a cake pop type creation, i don't think i'll be making them again. i'm just not really one for smashed cake, i think i'll stick to cookies and pie.