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!

Reindeer Doughnuts

Reindeer Doughnuts

The girls made some special Christmas Treats today. We made Nerdy Nummies Reindeer Doughnuts. These are so easy to make, the girls made them on their own.

What you need:

• Chocolate covered mini doughnuts
• Red smarties or m&ms - we used some brown ones too for the non-Rudolph reindeer.
• Pretzels
• White pearl sprinkles - I got Cake Angels Tuxedo sprinkles from Tesco and separated the white and black pearls.

Method

• Break the pretzels into stick shapes for the antlers and push them into the doughnuts
• Press the red smartie into the doughnut hole
• Press the pearl sprinkles where the eyes should be, and you're done!

Rebecca's Teddy Bear Doughnut

Om, Nom, Nom!

Candy Cake

I started thinking about having a Pinata type cake for Jeff's birthday after a conversation with Elizabeth about what Pinatas were. When I looked on the internet at other cakes like this, most seemed to cook the cakes in normal cake tins and hollow out the middle. I thought they often looked a bit messy once you cut into them.

On a recent shopping trip Jeff pointed out a cake tin where bakes the cake with a hollowed out shape of a heart in the middle to fill with mouse or ice cream or a different cake. He had seen it being used on Nerdy Nummies. I thought this would do the trick. So I ordered this one from amazon.

I also googled some images of cakes to get ideas for decorating the outside of the cake. I liked the idea of having sweeties on the outside but I didn't want it to be over the top, or too like the "I can't believe you made that cake".

And this is what I ended up with:

I had to redo my cake because there was not enough cake mixture to rise above the shape of the heart inside. And second time round I ran out of eggs, so I have a mixture of large and medium eggs. But the cake was really fluffy and moist that I might do the same next time!

Cake Ingredients:

• 375g soft unsalted butter
• 375g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs, 3 medium eggs, one egg yolk (6 large eggs will probably do)
• 375g SR flour
• 2 tsp of baking powder
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 tbsp milk

Method:

• Preheat oven to 160 degrees
• Grease the two baking trays
• Mix all the ingredients except the milk together in the food mixer. I mixed them for about 5 minutes until the mixture was fluffy and airy. Then I slowly added milk until the mixture was a soft drooping consistency.
• Add the mixture to the tins so that they cover the shape of the heart.
• Cook till it golden and the sponge springs back when touched. About 25-30 minutes.
• Leave them in the tins for a few minutes before popping them out of the tins and placing on a cooling wire.

When they cooled down I added sweets to the bottom layer of the cake. I used Haribo Starmix and some Tesco Jelly Beans. They had to be raised above the level of the cake because of the top half of the heart. I did not add enough. I felt that I could have tried to put a lot more in.

I would have liked there to have been more of a spilling out effect when the cake was cut. There probably would have been had there just been the jelly beans inside. Or if I had gone with smarties or skittles or something.

When served it didn't look very elegant because of the hole. But the taste made up for that.

Then I glazed the cake with some runny apricot jam, because I know that can be good for keeping the cake from crumbling when you add the icing.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing Ingredients (from Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery)

• 110g soft butter
• 60ml semi-skimmed milk
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 500g icing sugar

Method

• Mix butter, milk, vanilla extract and half the icing sugar together until the mixture is smooth. Then gradually add in the rest of the icing sugar.

I spread half the buttercream icing onto the cake. Then put it in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Then I spread the other half on.

I pressed skittles around the outside and put lolly pops on the top. Of course the lolly pops sang into the hollow of the heart, so more sweets inside would probably have given them more resistance then they could have stood up a little higher. But overall I was very pleased with the result. So was Jeff. And the girls actually went "wow" when they saw it.

Do you want to build a snowman?

Another creation inspired by Nerdy Nummies. This time it's Olaf Ice Creams from the movie Frozen.

Elizabeth was desperate for me to try this creation. I took a look at the video and thought it looked do-able.

What you need:

• A suitable glass
• Ice cream
• Milk or plain chocolate (depending on preference really, I used milk), melted and in a piping bag
• Empire Biscuits (75g butter, 25g sugar, 100g SR flour) shaped into Olaf heads - I found a picture online to make a template to cut around
• Plain white icing for the top of the biscuit
• Orange jelly tots cut in half for the nose
• Matchsticks for the arms. I got the mini matchsticks, which were a perfect size.

Method:

I made a few biscuit heads - in case any didn't work out. Coat the top of the biscuit in white icing, add the half orange jelly tot for Olaf's nose. Once the icing is set, use your melted chocolate in a piping bag to draw the rest of the features. Meanwhile the girls got busy with cookie cutters making and decoraging their own biscuits (and eating the decorations).

To make the snowman, first pipe 3 circles of chocolate inside the glass to make the buttons and let them set.

Add your ice cream, matchsticks and lastly the biscuits and voila!

Unikitty Treats

Rainy days in the summer holidays are perfect days for baking projects!

Inspired by Nerdy Nummies Snickers Pops we made our own Lego Movie Unikitty Treats.

Elizabeth loves to watch Rosanna Pansino's Nerdy Nummies channel on YouTube. As a result of that, and my own interest in baking, she is now very interested in baking and cooking and can often be found sat on the kitchen counter beside me.

This is the second of Nerdy Nummies projects that has inspired me to try my own version.

The Nerdy Nummies version uses a funsize snickers bar, I decided to base mine on Nigella Lawson's Marshmallow Crispy Squares instead. I also decided to take it a step further and make the whole Unikitty instead of just the head.

What you need:

• Nigella's Marshmallow Crispy Squares use mixed white and pink mini marshmallows to make them pink. Cut them into rectangle shapes. Eat the cut offs, these are yummy treats on their own!
• White chocolate, melted 
• for making the white feet and the bottom of the head white
• and to stick down all the fondant and chocolate pieces etc
• Coloured fondant icing 
• red for the ears, mouth, nose and cheeks
• blue and white for the horn and blue for the tail
• green for the neck
• white chocolate buttons for the eyes
• milk chocolate drops for the eyes
• melted plain chocolate for the eye lashes. Use a piping bag to draw the these.
• I also used the arm of a gingerbread man cutter to cut out the middle of the body.

This is how she looks in the Lego Movie, for those that haven't seen it:

I'm pretty pleased with the results. Elizabeth helped by dipping the crispy squares into the white chocolate, rolling out the fondant icing and she drew the eyelashes on some of our Unikitty Treats. Rebecca helped by eating the ingredients!