Red Nose Cake Pops

It's Red Nose Day!

In order to get involved, spread awareness, and hopefully encourage a few extra donations, I decided to create something a bit special for today's post: Red Nose Cake Pops!

Red velvet cake pops covered in red candy melts make the tastiest red noses you'll ever try. I baked up a batch of Hummingbird Bakery Red Velvet Cupcakes, to use as the cakey-base for these, but you could use any sponge recipe you like!

Ingredients:
12 red velvet cupcakes
75g cream cheese
200g icing sugar
200g red candy melts
1 tsp vegetable oil

Prep time: 40 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. I'm cheating this time, and using a batch of the Hummingbird Bakery cupcakes I made earlier. So, the first step is to whip up a batch of your favourite red velvet cupcakes, and leave them to cool!
2. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your frosting by beating together the cream cheese and icing sugar until it forms a smooth paste.
3. Take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. Once the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a bowl, then mix in a tbsp of the butter cream. Add more butter cream a little at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy. 
4. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set.
5. Melt your red candy melts, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Stir in the vegetable oil to "thin down" the candy to make it easier to dip your pops later. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! 
6. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted candy. The cold cake will set the candy very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
7. Dip a lollipop stick around 1cm into the candy and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a lollipop stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
8. Dip each cake pop into the melted candy and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. 
9. Hey presto - your very own, very tasty, Red Noses!

Cake pop tips:
Use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!

When dipping, it's best to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt your cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work.

Line a baking tray with clingfilm, then pour any leftover chocolate onto it and put it in the fridge. Once set, you can break the chocolate into chunks and store in a food bag until next time. Note - this doesn't work so well if you drop cake in the chocolate or keep dipping your fingers/a spoon in!

Finally: Practise makes perfect!

Like this post? get involved in the Red Nose fun by making a donation to Comic Relief: https://www.rednoseday.com/donate

Happy Thoughts
x

Cake'n'Bake Wednesday: Valentine's Cake Pops

Valentines was the theme for our February 2012 meeting, but I had already decided what I wanted to bake. My Mum got me this wonderful Cake Pop recipe book for Christmas, and since then I really wanted to try them. However, I'd had my heart set on making Macaroons in January, so the Cake Pops got pushed back a month and ended up being my Valentines themed bake instead. (Stick hearts and flowers on anything and it's automatically Valentines themed ;-P) I was also lucky enough to have this recipe feature in Macmillan Cancer Care's Little Book of Treats 2012 - the Cake'n'Bake Club voted for this as their favourite recipe for a "luxury treat" and so this was the recipe we submitted. Proud doesn't even cover how I felt when I was able to buy a copy in M&S!

Cake Pops are, in theory, really simple to make. In practise; well it was a little bit of trial and error, and the recipe in the book (in my opinion) used way too much icing which made the mixture difficult to handle. What I would say is if you want to give Cake Pops a go then just do it! They are great fun to make and even when decorated simply they look fantastic! I've amended the original recipe and directions below to add in some of the hints and tips I learnt in the process. I used chocolate cake with vanilla icing, white chocolate and pink candy melts, however you could use pretty much any flavour (or combination of flavours of) cake, icing, chocolate, candy melts, you name it! One idea I toyed with, but didn't try this time was melting some fondant to coat the cake balls and having fondant fancy inspired pops... Just a thought!

Prep time: Around 2 hours
Make 20 Cake Pops

Ingredients:
125g margarine
125g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
125g self raising flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
150g white chocolate buttons or white candy melts
300g pink chocolate buttons or pink candy melts
3-4 tsps vegetable oil, as required
love heart shaped sprinkles
8 fondant roses

You will also need some lollipop sticks, and a block of polystyrene to stand you cake pops in as they set!

1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, and grease and line a baking tin.
2. Beat the margarine and sugar together until creamy, then add one of the eggs and beat til fluffy. Fold in half of the flour and the cocoa. Beat in the second egg, and then fold in the remaining flour. 
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 25-30 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Remove the cake from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack.
4. Whilst your cake is cooling, it's a good idea to make your sugar roses, and clear some space in your freezer! You can also get the cream cheese icing ready, by beating together the cream cheese and icing sugar until creamy.
5. Once the cake is completely cool, break it into pieces. You want to turn your cake into crumbs and the easiest way to do this is to stick the pieces in a blender and give them a quick whizz, however if you don't have a blender you could always use a cheese grater and crumb you cake by hand, but this takes much longer. 
6. Once your cake is sufficiently crumbed, mix in half of the cream cheese icing. Add more icing as needed to bind the crumbs together, but be careful not to add to much or it may make your mixture too sloppy to work with. 
7. Measure 30g blobs of the cake pop mixture, and roll these into balls. Place the balls onto a lined baking tray and into the freezer for at least 20 minutes. (Gives you a chance to wash up some of those dishes... this recipe uses a lot of dishes!)
8. Once the cake balls are solid, melt your chocolate/candy melts, either in the microwave or over a pan of hot water. A few tips here - as I was only making a few cake pops, but still needed the chocolate/candy melts to be deep enough for dipping, I found it helpful to melt mine in a mug. It was wide enough for me to dip my pops into, but not so wide that the chocolate lacked the depth required. Secondly, it helps to add a tsp of vegetable oil to your mug of melted chocolate/candy melts. Yes, I know it seems weird to do so, but this thins down the chocolate/candy melts just enough to make them much more suitable for dipping!
9. I started with the white chocolate... to begin with, dip each lollipop stick around 1cm into your melted chocolate, and then push that end into a cake ball. (apparently this helps the stick the cake to the lollipop stick!) Once that chocolate has set (which won't take long since you cake balls are very cold!) Dip 8 of your cake pops, one at a time, into the white chocolate. Gently tap the cake pops on the side of the mug to discard the excess chocolate, then stick the pop upright into your polystyrene block to set. Repeat the process using the melted pink candy melts for the remaining 12 cakes pops. However, this time sprinkle a few of your heart shaped sprinkles over each cake pop as the candy begins to set. 
10. Place any leftover pink candy into a piping bag fitted with a very fine nozzle. Go back to you white cake pops, and pipe vertical stripes onto each. Use some melted candy to secure a sugar rose on the top of each of these cake pops.
11. Hey presto, you're all done! The cake pops are best stored wrapped in cellophane bags in the fridge, and will keep for up to a week (if they last that long!!)

Happy Thoughts
x

Witches Hat Cake Pops

Happy Halloween! 

I know my usual blog-post-date is Friday, but as I couldn't let Halloween pass by without sharing my recipe for these cute little cake pops! Besides... a little bird could be heard to say that there will be a new regular(ish) Wednesday blog post coming your way in addition to the weekly Friday posts :-)

It may seem like I've been bitten with the Cake Pop bug (and there's probably some truth in that!), but I absolutely LOVE these Halloween Cake Pops. They are a simple vanilla cake with vanilla icing style cake pop, dipped in dark chocolate. The trickiest part of this recipe was getting the colour of the cakes to match the colour of the fondant icing! The witches hats can also be made a few days in advance, if that helps!


Ingredients:
For the witches hats:
30g orange coloured fondant
30g purple coloured fondant
30g green coloured fondant
A little edible glue

For the cake:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour
Orange, purple and green food colouring

For the icing:
75g butter
150g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
200g dark chocolate (you may end up with a little left over)
1tsp vegetable oil

Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 15-20 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. Start by making your little witches hats, as you'll need to give these a little bit of time to dry. Starting with the orange icing, roll out to around 3mm thick and cut out five small circles (I used the wrong side on and icing nozzle for this). Gather the icing back together into a ball, and then tear chunks off to mould five small cones with your hands. Use a little of the edible glue to stick the cone to the circular base, and put to one side to dry. Repeat this step with the purple and green icing. Put the hats to one side to dry.
2. Meanwhile, move on to the cake. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter. Split the batter evenly between 3 bowls, and use the food colouring to create an orange, purple and green batter.
4. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown on top and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
6. Using one colour sponge at a time, take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. Once the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a bowl, then mix in a tbsp of the butter cream. Add more butter cream a little at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy. 
7. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Repeat steps 7 and 8 with the other two colour sponges. 
8. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set. You'll probably find that you have a small chunk of each different colour left over. You could mash this together to make a multicoloured cake pop, however, it's always best to just eat any leftover mixture :-)
9. Melt your chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! 
10. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate and your decorations. The cold cake will set the chocolate very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
11. Dip a lollipop stick around 1cm into the chocolate and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a lollipop stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
12. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Whilst the chocolate is still sticky, press one of the fondant hats in the corresponding colour onto the cake pop. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. 

Cake pop tips:
Use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!

When dipping, it's best to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt your cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work.

Line a baking tray with clingfilm, then pour any leftover chocolate onto it and put it in the fridge. Once set, you can break the chocolate into chunks and store in a food bag until next time. Note - this doesn't work so well if you drop cake in the chocolate or keep dipping your fingers/a spoon in!

Finally: Practise makes perfect!

Funny story - I put the 3 less fortunate looking pops (one in each colour) to one side to use as the ones I would slice into to show you the cross section. It didn't cross my mind at the time that the purple one with chocolate down the stick would still have chocolate down the stick after I'd chopped into it! So this, ladies and gents, is why it's important to tap off the excess chocolate! :-)

Happy Thoughts
x

Eyeball Cakepops

I LOVE Halloween, it's one of my favourite times of year! My mum usually has a big Halloween party where we put up a gazebo in her back garden, spend a whole day turning it into a haunted house, spend another whole day making "scary" food, and then gather our weird and wonderful family and friends round in the costumes to enjoy it! Anyway, it's now mid-October, so I wanted the rest of the recipes I post in October to be Halloween themed - hopefully lots of treats and very few tricks!

The first of my Halloween inspired recipes is these eyeball cake pops, which weren't originally Halloween themed at all, in fact, they were made for Valentines Day. You see, one of my friends was doing an internship at the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies - London's only purveyor of quality goods for monsters of every kind. Part of Helen's responsibilities at HSMS was to look after the volunteers, and so she often put on social events for them to help them get to know one another better, but also to improve the human volunteers understanding of monsters, and vice verse. So, for Valentine's Day this year, Helen, another of the interns, Dee, and their monster colleague the Yeti decided to host a Monster Speed Dating event, and I was called in to do the catering. Below is the recipe for my "Eyes for You" cake pops, suitable for humans at Halloween, or for monsters at Valentines!

Ingredients:
For the cake:
100g margarine
100g caster sugar
1 medium egg
1tsp vanilla extract
100g self raising flour

For the icing:
50g butter
100g icing sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract
Milk, if required.

To decorate:
200g white chocolate
1tsp vegetable oil
50g coloured fondant (in the colour of your choice - I used half green and half blue, but it might look fun with more spooky colours!)
Black food colouring or a black edible ink pen

Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 12-15 minutes
Makes 15 cake pops

1. Start by making the cake. I usually bake cupcakes if I'm baking specifically for cake pops, as they tend to cook and cool faster than a large cake would. However, cake pops are also a great way to use any leftover cake or cake scraps, so just use whichever cake tin is your favourite - your cake will end up in crumbs anyway!
2. Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and line a bun tray with cupcakes cases.
3. Cream together the margarine and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour until the ingredients combined to create a smooth batter. Spoon the batter into the prepared cupcake cases and bake for 15-20 minutes,  until golden brown and springy to the touch. Allow the cakes to cool completely on a wire rack.
4. Whilst the cakes are cooling, prepare your butter cream. Beat the butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract together until smooth and creamy, adding a little milk if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.
5. Take the cooled cupcakes out of their wrappers and break them into a blender. Pulse the cakes on a high speed to break them into fine crumbs. One the cake is sufficiently crumbed, pour the crumbs into a large mixing bowl, then mix in half of the butter cream. Add more butter cream one tablespoon at a time until you get a mixture that holds together well without crumbling, but isn't too sloppy - you might not need to use all of the butter cream for this!
6. Now its time to get your hands dirty! First of all, line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and make some space for that tray in your fridge or freezer. Measure out 30g portions of the cake mixture, then shape it into a ball with you hands and place this on the baking tray. Once you've turned all of your mixture into balls put these into the freezer for 20 minutes to set. Eat any leftover mixture (a 15g cake ball is no good to anybody!)
7. Meanwhile, prepare the decorations for the cake pops. Roll out the coloured fondant and cut out circles - I used the "wrong" side of a Wilton icing nozzle which seemed to be around the perfect size. Use the black food colouring / food colouring pen to draw on the pupil of the eye in the centre of your coloured fondant then put these to one side to dry.
8. Melt your white chocolate, either in the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Once the chocolate has completely melted, stir in a teaspoon of vegetable oil to "thin down" the chocolate. Don't worry - you won't be able to taste the oil! My tip here is to use a tall, thin receptacle for melting your chocolate, such as a mug or small bowl. If you use a wide bowl your chocolate will be too shallow for dipping!
9. Take your tray of cake balls out of the freezer and place on your work surface next to the melted chocolate and your decorations. The cold cake will set the chocolate very quickly, so it's important to have everything you need to hand here as you will need to work fast!
10. Dip a cocktail stick around 1.5cm into the chocolate and then push this into one of the cakey balls. The theory behind this is that the chocolate will help to stick the cake pop to the stick! Stick each cake pop with a cocktail stick in this way. By the time you've stuck all of the sticks, the first one you did should be set. 
11. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate and give it a quick spin to coat evenly. Take the tap the cake pop on the side of the bowl to remove any excess chocolate, then put the cake pop, stick side first, into a polystyrene block. Whilst the chocolate is still sticky, press one of the fondant irises onto the cake pop. Repeat with all the pops and then leave to set. My tip for dipping is to get your cake pop in and out of the warm chocolate as quickly as possible, as the temperature of the chocolate and the bowl/mug will melt you r cake pop and make it fall off of it's stick. Don't worry too much about doing it, just go for it and it will work. And don't forget: Practise makes perfect!

Happy Thoughts
x

Bonus Features

More often then not, the features in the Disney Classic collection last between and hour to an hour and a half. But for the Disney Movie gang and I, that simply isn't enough time! So to prolong our nights of Disney nostalgia, fun and too much cake we often play the bonus features. Sometimes these are great (like the AWESOME mining game on Snow White's bonus disc) and sometimes they are not - nevertheless we have a great time watching them. (Inside joke: Beauty and the Beast is the most loved Disney Classic EVER!)

Now that we've finished all 50 of the Disney Classics, I do feel a little sad. I invested my time, money and sometimes tears into this project, and whilst I'm glad to have completed it (almost) successfully, I do kinda wish we had a bonus disc, just to give us a little more time.

So, even though there are (as yet) no more movies in the Disney Classic collection, here's a quick little recipe which uses up leftover cake and icing, just to give us a little more time until the end.

The number you make, the time it takes and how much cake and icing you need really depends on how much you have leftover, but as a general rule of thumb I would advise having 3 times as much cake as you have icing.

1. Take your leftover cake and break it into fine crumbs. (You can use a blender if you want to speed things up, but it does mean more cleaning!)
2. Stir in the leftover icing until it forms a smooth gloopy paste.
3. Press the mixture into a silicone mould, and place in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. Or, it you don't want to use a mould, just roll teaspoon sized blobs of the mixture into balls, place on a tray and put in the freezer to set.
4. Once set, remove from the mould and place a lollipop stick into them (or cocktail stick, as I had no lollipop sticks available!)
5. Dip the into some melted chocolate, candy wafers or other cake covering and then pop into a styrofoam cup to dry. (As you can see from my picture, I did not get chance to complete this step as I dropped my plate of pops - d'oh!)

Happy thoughts!
x

PS - please don't get the wrong impression from this post... it's not all doom and gloom in the Princess and the Cake HQ! In fact, after taking a little break from Disney Movie Nights, rumour has it the Disney Movie Nights gang will soon be getting back together to start the Disney/Pixar Collection - coming soon!