Cake Pops. Yay!

An army of cake pops with an injured soldier :P

 Ahah! Finally I made it. After months of imagining myself rolling those pops, this weekend was the best time to materialize it. This one was made with a choc sponge center and dark chocolate coating. I had no lidi satay or lollipop sticks so I just used toothpicks. The pops I made were small so toothpicks could hold them. You can visit Veronica's Cornucopia and learn more about cake pops.* One tip: do NOT use cooking choc for the dip. The taste is sssooo NOT GOOD. I know dark choc costs a little bit extra but it is worth it.

The recipe for the cake part is a modified version of a mocha sponge I found a while back. Of course I had to ommit the liquer from the original recipe. So this is my version:

Part I: The cake = 6" Choc sponge
 (for around 23-25 pops)

1 ½ tbsp cocoa powder

1 ½ tbsp hot water

1 tbsp chocolate emulco

½ cup cake flour

¾ tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

2 egg whites

2 egg yolks

1/8 cups sugar & ¼ cups sugar

-  Dissolve cocoa powder, chocolate emulco in hot water. Set aside.

-   Whip egg white until soft peaks form, sprinkle 1/8 cups sugar while whipping the egg whites and continue to whip until stiff but not dry. Set aside.

-    Whip egg yolks with ¼ cups sugar until thick and pale (around 5 minutes. Can even be whipped by hand).

-    Stir in the chocolate mixture. Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into the mixture and mix slowly.

-    Fold in half the egg whites into the chocolate batter gently until well mixed.

-    Fold in the remaining egg whites.

-    Bake for 20-30 minutes.

This cake can be eaten or decorated the way it is, but to make the pops, leave the cake to cool and crumble them up until they are like cake crumbs and add the 'binder' to it and mix until you can shape small balls.

Part II: The Binder = Choc-honey ganache. This is from Blue Key Recipes.

50g Cooking choc

30g whipping cream

10g butter

5 g honey

- melt all on a double boiler and mix around 3 tbsp to the cake crumbs. Try to mix it around 1st then add a little more, bit-by-bit until its soft enough to mould.

- place the balls on a tray and cover with plastic wrap. Keep in the fridge for around 2 hours.

Part III: The Coat = Dark choc



Toothpicks sticking ceremony completed

6oz dark choc

1/2 tbsp coconut oil

- melt all on a double boiler

- after all of the choc is almost melted, take the bowl off the heat and stir around to let it melt in the remaining heat.

- take out the pops from the fridge and dip 1/4 of the toothpick in the melted choc before sticking it into the pops. It will act like a glue. Repeat for all and put the pops back in the fridge. Take out 3 at a time maybe and coat those 1st. Then stick them on to a styrofoam board. You can line the styrofoam with plastic wrap for easy cleaning. The pops has to be cold when they are coated. This helps the choc to stick and harden. You can decorate you pops with nuts or coloured rice. Then pop one in your mouth for taste!



Three little pops on a choc-cheese brownie, ready for delivery



What will be the next flavour of these pops? Does lemon cake with white choc coating sounds nice? Or strawberry cake with dark choc coating? Or even banana cake and cherry chunks with choc coating, sumthing like a banana split. hehehe...I wonder...