Homemade cake pops

I made cake pops the other day for the first time. I have been meaning to for awhile now since I first discovered them on Twitter. I follow a lot of people who like to tweet their food :)

Apparently, cake pops are fairly new. Only recently did we taste our first cake pops at Starbucks. Hey if Starbucks has them now, they must be the latest sweet trend! It's ridiculously rich and fattening! They are so satisfying too that you only need to eat one. Trust me, you don't want to eat more than one!

I made my cake pops using a brownie mix. I know. It's shameful:( I make everything from scratch normally but we have this huge box of brownie mix my friend gave us. After baking the brownies, I threw in roasted pecans, along with the cream cheese, icing sugar, milk, and butter. As if cake alone isn't fattening enough, right? I only used 1/4 of the icing sugar that was listed in the recipe.

The outcome was pretty and definitely had potential. It was a bit on the sweet side. I would definitely make my own cake from scratch next time and that should help. I used white chocolate and white candy melts for the coating, which is probably why it's a bit sweeter. Dark chocolate would make a difference here too. The white is nicer to decorate and so much prettier though.


For those of you who are curious and would like to attempt cake pops, I have a few tips for you.

• After rolling the balls, freeze them for hours or overnight. Don't be impatient here.
• Dip the stick in a bit of melted chocolate first, then dip the ball.
• Coating is much easier and works better if you have loads of candy melt, as opposed to just enough. I had just enough and only my first ball turned out smooth.
• Work fast. You don't want your balls to thaw, otherwise it won't work.
• Don't get greedy on the coating or else there will be a big mess!
• I used 4 inch sticks and that worked well for the size of balls that could be eaten in one sitting :) You can go bigger but you'll need longer sticks.

Finally, to get you inspired and motivated, you need to check out Bakerella cake pop photo gallery! The decorating possibilities are endless. I absolutely love all the cute cake pops they do.