Cake Pops: A tale of triumph over disaster

This all started last Wednesday when I saw something awesome on the internet. Cake Pops. The idea is simple. Bake a cake. Crumble it up. Mix in frosting. Form it into balls. Put it on a stick. Dip it in chocolate. The result, essentially heaven on a stick. My options were clear. Make the Cake Pops.

Luckily, for me, I was invited to a triple birthday bash over the weekend, what a perfect venue for me to unveil these guys. I should have known, anyone who "experiments" in the kitchen knows that trying something new for a particular event is never going to end well. This would be no different.

I baked Martha's Yellow Butter Cake, which may have ended my quest for a good yellow cake recipe. It was pretty tasty. When it was sufficiently cooled I crumbled it up into a bowl, and put that in the fridge. Then I started in on Martha's Strawberry Swiss Meringue Frosting. I've fought with this particular recipe so many times. It sure requires a LOT of mixing. And this time, I nailed it. The frosting was perfect. And delicious.

I started adding the frosting to the cake, and here's where the fails began. I added too much frosting, so it was a little too gooey. I should have stopped, but I didn't really know until I had gone too far. Unaware of the potential disasters lurking in my future, I rolled the cake/frosting mixture into 1 or 1.5 inch round balls. Then I threw them back in the fridge.

I melted the chocolate in the microwave, following the package instructions, and after putting the candy sticks in the cake balls I was ready to dip. No dice. The balls were so gooey, and began to fall apart in the warmed chocolate. When flipped upright to harden, the chocolatey ball of goo just slid off the stick. I tried a few, and each one was worse than before. So I stopped. With only an hour before the party, I "cleaned up" by putting 40 balls of cake and frosting on cookie sheets in my fridge, and ran out the door.

Two days later, I was trying to figure out what to do with the cake balls when I realized they'd firmed up a lot more. So I tried it again. Success. They are not pretty, I have no idea how anyone made them look like little chicks - mine are clearly lumpy blobs. I guess, you have to start somewhere. You can follow the whole process here (note, there are a lack of pictures of the mess, who knew that it would be resolved and warrant documentation). Without further ado, I introduce you to my first Cake Pops!