Valentine's Day Cake Pops

Valentine's Day Cake Pops

I wasn't going to bake any more cakes until at least May after making Elizabeth's Birthday Cake. However I made an exception for these Valentine's Day cake pops because they're not really cakes, they're cake pops! Plus I've never tried them before so it was a challenge.

Shopping!
I bought some cake pop moulds from Tesco. They were on sale at £1.50. Pretty good as I've seen them for about £7 elsewhere.

I bought red candy melts from hobbycraft. And I also got lolly pop sticks from hobbycraft and a stand for holding the pops while they set, although I've seen people using polystyrene for this.

I watched a few videos: Nerdy Nummies

And Megs Goodies

And I also got some help from a brilliant Step by Step Cake Decorating book I got for Christmas by Karen Sullivan.

I used the chocolate cake recipe from the book. It said that making cake pops was an excellent way of using up leftover cake. LEFTOVER CAKE? WHO HAS LEFTOVER CAKE JUST LYING AROUND!!!

It also said to use 300g of *leftover* cake. And I had no idea how much cake would be 300g. I took a chance and halved the recipe and it weighed 312g when cooked. Perfect!

Chocolate Cake:

87g unsalted, softened butter

87g soft light brown sugar

1 large egg and the yolk of another

62g self raising flour

25g cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp greek yoghurt

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar together.

Add the egg(s) and mix again.

Fold in the dry ingredients.

Lastly add the yoghurt.

Bake it in a greased 7 inch cake tin at 180 degrees for 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. 

Chocolate Buttercream Icing:

62g unsalted, softened butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

150g icing sugar

1/2 tbsp milk

2 tbsp cocoa powder

Method: 

Cream together the butter and vanilla extract. Add the icing sugar and cocoa powder, mix again. Add the milk and beat until the icing is light and fluffy.

Making Cake Pops - I made 18 cake pops

• When the cake is cool, break it up into crumbs and mix it with 150g of buttercream icing until you have a smooth dough. Now you can hand mould it into balls or use silicon moulds. Using the moulds was time consuming for me because there were only 5 hearts in the mat, so I could only do 5 at a time.
• Once I had filled my 5 moulds I put them in the freezer for 30 minutes. Then I popped them out and smoothed out the edges, then I put them in the fridge while the next batch were being prepared.
• Next up you dip one end of a cake-pop stick into "chocolate" and insert it into the center of each pop. Leave it for about 30 minutes to set.
• I used some Lindt white chocolate for this. When it melted it was really runny and it did not hold the cake pops onto the stick well enough. So when it came to covering the pops quite a few fell off and we ended up with some very messy (but tasty) pops. I suggest using some of the candy melts instead because that stuff is like cement!
• Then dip the pops into the melted candy melts and swirl to cover.
• When I melted the candy melts the mixture was really quite thick, so I added some water and mixed it thoroughly. Then I put the mixture back into the microwave for 10 seconds throughout the decorating process, in order to keep it quite runny. But this step would have generally been easier if the cakes were more firmly stuck to the sticks.
• And add some sprinkles to finish off.

These were really, really yummy. The girls loved them and ate 3 each last night! I bought little bags and ties from hobbycraft and the girls gave them as gifts to their friends. I will definitely experiment more with cake pops now that I've tried them. Nom, nom, nom!

If you tried the cake pops, let me know what you think. Leave a comment below.
Also, I'm always looking for new ideas for baking/cooking, if you have any suggestions, leave a comment!

Can I haz Cheezburger? Aka Ice Cream Sandwiches

Can I haz Cheezburger?

I had a request from Elizabeth to make another Nerdy Nummies treat. This time she picked the Cheeseburger Ice Cream Sandwich.

I made my usual Empire Biscuits for the burger bun. Elizabeth and Rebecca used a round cookie cutter on the dough to make 8 cookies. I couldn't find any sugar sprinkles that weren't pink or blue, so to make the seed effect for the top "bun" I put chocolate sprinkles on the biscuits as soon as the came out of the oven, so that they would melt a bit and stick to the biscuit.

Then I used the same cookie cutter to cut out the chocolate ice cream. This part was messy! Probably best to have a bowl of hot water to dip the knife into before cutting. I did it the same way as Ro in the video linked. I cut a tub of chocolate ice cream, took the carton off it and then cut out a large cylinder of chocolate ice cream with the cookie cutter, then sliced it into 4 burger sized shapes. I then put them back into the freezer.

Next up I made some "ketchup". I made a batch of buttercream icing: 100g icing sugar, 50g butter. Then I got the girls to squish up some raspberries through a sieve and we added the puree raspberries to the buttercream. Elizabeth got herself and Rebecca a spoon each to eat this sauce because it was SO GOOD!

Then we assembled it all to look like a burger. I didn't do any "cheez" so our creation is really just a burger, but it was great all the same.

These were great fun to make with the girls. They were absolutely covered in chocolate after eating them!

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Frozen Cake and Pizza Party

Frozen Birthday Cake

I got the idea of having a Pizza Party for Elizabeth's birthday from kneadwhine, who took her little boy to Pizza Express for his birthday last year. I remember thinking, "I could do that". And I did!

Elizabeth was happy with the idea, but to be honest I could have convinced her to do anything for her birthday. She was just so excited about it full stop!

She invited 4 friends, so there were 6 children in total. All of them RSVP'd with their favourite pizza topping.

I had to buy in 4 extra rolling pins, 1 extra pizza baking tray and I bought 6 aprons from Poundland.

I made two lots of pizza dough in the breadmaker. And I used Tesco's pizza sauce and ready grated mozzarella.

For their toppings they had a selection of ham, pepperoni and pineapple.

I used 3/4 of the second batch of pizza dough to make dough balls to serve with the pizzas. They also had some salad sides and some hula hoops and cheesy crisps.

Pizza Birthday Tea

They all made their own pizzas and while they were cooking they played party games with Grandma in the living room.

Tesco had some ready made party game packs. I bought 3, a Pin the tail on the Donkey, Sleeping Lions, and Musical Mats - which was a musical chairs substitute. They also played pass the parcel. I was really impressed with the games from Tesco, and everything can be reused.

After they had their birthday tea, Elizabeth took all her friends upstairs to her room to show off her bunk beds. I came upstairs and found all 6 of them on the top bunk!

When they came back down there was time for one more game before the parents arrived. It all went brilliantly! Everyone was well behaved and happy. There was lots of giggling and smiling faces!

And to top it all off, Elizabeth had this cake (which I made):

Frozen Cake
I've been developing this idea since Rebecca's Scooby Doo cake, when Elizabeth said she wanted a Frozen Cake for her birthday. I wanted to make a palace, but it was just too difficult. I think I would have either had to have cake covered in sugar glass, which wouldn't have looked great, or I would have had to use non-edible crafts.

So I ended up with this design as a compromise by having the sugar glass at the back as ice shards and by making it in three tiers to give the height of the palace. And in the end it was MUCH easier than the Scooby Doo cake because I didn't have to make templates or cut out intricate designs and lettering by hand.

I first purchased snowflake cutters from amazon. Then I printed off several sugar glass recipes from the internet. I tried it with food colouring and without. And for the finished product, I wish I had put the colouring in because the glass caramalised a bit too much and so looks too yellow. I also tried a bit of chocolate tempering. I got it right a few times, but as the cake wasn't being served as soon as it was made it was a bit pointless. The chocolate kept it's shape, but it didn't snap when broken.

Ice Shards

If I was doing it again I think I would skip the glass shards. They didn't really add to the overall look of the cake. I wanted them there to make it look more like the palace, but the cake was lovely without it.

I already had sandwich tins that were 20 cm. I managed to find two smaller ones, because I didn't want the cake to be massive. The top layer actually used a pie tin.

I used buttercream to sandwich the layers together and to spread on the cake before covering in the ready to roll fondant icing.

I briefly experimented with royal icing, but ran out of time to perfect it, so the piping on the cake was done with Dr Oetker's Designer Icing Pouch. They are great! They come with 4 piping nozzles. And one pouch did all the white piping on that cake.

And I added the snowflake shapes using white fondant icing and sticking them on by brushing water on them with a pastry brush.

The Frozen figures were bought off amazon. I didn't make them. However I will try modelling with fondant icing soon!

Bullyland Figures

Even if it wasn't the Frozen Palace, it was obviously a Frozen Cake. And Elizabeth was really happy with it and her friends were dying to try it.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth

What did you think of the Frozen cake? I'd love to hear your comments or suggestions.