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!

Blueberry Muffins

So I went to my local Farmer's Market this past week with Diane and Lyle. It actually just started this past week too. It was pretty small, but I was able to find some key items. I got some delicious corn on the cob, swiss chard, cucumbers, and BLUEBERRIES! :)

Scott saw the blueberries in the fridge and said, "I like blueberry muffins." I wasn't even planning on making blueberry muffins, but I looked around for a recipe, found one with the ingredients I actually had (who keeps buttermilk in their fridge on a regular basis? I ask you. I certainly don't.) and there you go. And you know what? They were pretty damn good. . . not healthy at ALL, but certainly yummy.

The recipe came from my beloved Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. Jenni, if you decide to make these (because I know you have at least one copy of the cookbook. . .) I highly recommend either waiting until they're completely cooled to take them out of the pan OR taking Martha's advice to grease and flour the pan. I used Baker's Joy instead, which is wonderful as you know, but the muffins were just really delicate and didn't come out of the pan very easily.

Isn't summer fruit just wonderful?!

New post, old news

So it's been a while, no? I have no excuse. At all. It's not like I've been in Australia for the past two weeks like SOME people. . . though I only wish that were the case.

Anyway, here you go. I know some of you have seen this, but it's a picture of the very large and heavy cake I made for one of my students. It was my favorite white cake recipe, care of Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. The frosting was also a favorite -- that swiss meringue butter cream from Cake Art. For the filling, I made the same concoction as I did for the anniversary cakes. I just took part of the swiss meringue and mixed in some strawberry jam. Yum! It was good -- not too strawberry-y. It kind of tasted like strawberry mousse.

Now that husky was quite a challenge! It caused me much stress, but I think in the end turned out okay. Hey, it was the best I could do. The "woot woot" instead of the expected "woof woof" coming out of the husky's mouth, was taken from Rachel's graduation party invitation. It said something like, "I'm graduating, can I get a woot woot?!" You know, in that old Arsenio Hall Show kind of way. At least that was how I interpreted it.

I fought the frosting and. . . I won.

I recently bought a fabulous book. It's called Cake Art, and it was put out by the Culinary Institute of America. These people are serious. I like them. Let's back track though, shall we?

This is a cake I made for my sister-in-law's graduation party. It was my go-to chocolate cake recipe, off of the Hershey's cocoa powder package. The FROSTING however, was one I wanted to test out for the 50th wedding anniversary cakes I'm making in May. Holy crap, it IS May! Well I guess you'll be seeing pictures of those cakes soon too. Anyway, the frosting was swiss meringue buttercream, which from what I've been reading, it a typical frosting used on wedding cakes because it can stay out a room temperature and hold its shape for at least a few hours.

I did try to make swiss meringue buttercream not too long ago. The recipe I used that time however was from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook -- another terrific book. The woman is totally nuts, but has some great tips, ideas, and recipes (usually. . . ). The frosting (and maybe I didn't beat it long enough) was really thin, and much too sweet for my taste. So I knew when I read the swiss meringue buttercream recipe in Cake Art, with less sugar and more butter, that it would be exactly what I was looking for.

I followed the recipe precisely, as I've fought with frosting in the past and wasn't going to let the frosting win again. . . or at least this time. Let me tell you, it was the perfect spreading consistency and it was creamy with a deliciously light taste. I won.