My cake-pop experience!

Hi guys, 

So the first time I heard about cake pops was through Bakerella; I tell you that woman is an absolute creative genius! Her ideas and creations are simply phenomenal! 

So I decided I wanted to try making cake pops of my own, smiley face ones. I like smileys. Remember the sugar cookies? But as you can see in the picture, there's only one smiley. That's because everyone ate the others before I got a chance to take pictures! ^_^

I used a simple Betty Crocker Super Moist Cake Mix for this (Yes, I know. I'm a huge Betty Crocker fan. But mixes really simplify everything! :) ) Once the cake had cooled down, I crumbled half of it into a bowl and mixed in about 3 heaped tablespoons of icing. Then I started the oh-so-messy task of rolling out the balls. I rolled out about 10 and put them in the fridge for 15 minutes while I started on the tempered chocolate. 

This was my first attempt at tempering chocolate, and I did so without a candy thermometer. Just melted  some white chocolate over a double boiler until the pieces were almost melted. I took the chocolate off the boiler and added some more pieces of chocolate. I mixed vigorously until they were all melted. I had read that the perfect test to see if the chocolate has tempered is to put some on a knife which is then put in the fridge. If it is nice and glossy after two minutes and comes off easily, the chocolate is done. Happily, the chocolate I put on the knife ended up looking nice and glossy! Yay!

I mixed in the yellow food colouring and then began coating the chocolate balls. However, I couldn't manage to coat them evenly, as you can see from the picture. I coated the rest of the cake balls using tempered chocolate and inserted the skewers. This was the final result!

And I'm pleased to say that everyone really enjoyed these! Next time though I shall buy some candy melts for the coating. The problem with candy melts is that they aren't easily available here in Islamabad so I shall have to order them online. But, as long as the cake pops turn out cuter and better I guess it will be worth it! 

Till next timee :)