by cupcakedaydreams
My friend Paulina’s bridal shower this week sounded like the perfect excuse to make cake pops. She’s going to Italy for her honeymoon next week, so we’ve thrown together a little Italy-themed party…complete with Chocolate Italian Flag and Chocolate Espresso Biscotti cake pops.
This was my first cake pop adventure and I will warn you – there were casualties. I have some advice (from fellow bakers and my own experience):
- Bake the cake at least one day in advance. You want it to be dry, not just cooled.
- Get yourself some styrafoam blocks from the craft store. I scavenged some mail room scraps and the little pieces went everywhere.
- Work in small batches. You don’t want to be working with hardening chocolate and warming cake balls.
- Completely cover the batter ball. The batter I was working with was still soft and it started to seep out of any tiny little hole.
Ok – the baking. I used one chocolate cake recipe and just split it between six cupcakes (for my other friend) and one sheet cake. While the cake was baking, I mixed up the Espresso buttercream and cream cheese frosting. Once the sheet cake was cooled, I split it in half and crumbled it in to each respective frosting. For the espresso ones, I mixed in about a cup and a half of crumbled almond biscottis. I let those sit in the fridge for about a half hour. This is where the advice comes in handy — I should have let these set for much longer so they fully combine and harden up, but I was on a deadline.
Once the frosting batter set up (and I finished the dishes) I started forming little (ok, they’re not so little but you get it) batter balls, then set them in the freezer. Once they were solid (about 30 minutes), I took out ten and started working on those. I melted my chocolate in the microwave (15 second intervals) and got to dipping. Note – dip the stick in the chocolate before sticking it in to batter ball so it stays in there. I did a round of sticks, then a round of fully dipping.
For the flags, I had red and green sprinkles handy and just dipped the freshly covered cake pop in the sprinkles. Not the exact look I was hoping for (a little messy and inexact) but still cute. For the other ones, I just used the left over white chocolate to write little “I Do”s or cover up little cracks in the temper-mental chocolate. It looks fancy.
In the end, one batch of chocolate batter made 6 cupcakes and about 50 cake pops (with some frosting cake batter stuff left over). Next time, I’m definitely going to try to make the cake a day or two in advance.
Happy Baking!
Recipes:
Chocolate Cake
2 cups sugar
2 1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup sour cream
1 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup coffee, cooled
1 1/2 cup crushed biscottis (hold on to these til combined with frosting)
- Preheat oven 350 degrees.
- In a large bowl, whisk flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
- Add oil, coffee, and eggs to the dry ingredients.
- Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth.
- Mix in the sour cream and vanilla until incorporated.
- Pour batter on to sheet cake pan (I made another 6 cupcakes with this batter too!)
- Bake approximately 18 – 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or the cake springs back to the touch.
- Let cool completely.
Espresso Buttter Cream
2 sticks of unsalted butter (room temperature)
2½ cups powdered sugar
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1½ teaspoons espresso powder
- Mix the espresso powder into the vanilla until dissolved; set aside.
- Using an electric mixer, whip the butter on medium-high speed for about 5 minutes, stopping once to scrape the sides of the bowl.
- Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the powdered sugar a cup at a time, waiting until it is mostly incorporated before adding more. Once all of the powdered sugar has been added, scrape the sides of the bowl and increase the speed to medium-high and whip until fluffy, about another minute or 2.
- Add the espresso/vanilla mixture and continue to mix at medium-high until it is completely incorporated.
Cream Cheese Frosting
2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)
2 packages (8oz) of cream cheese
3 cups sifted sugar
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Using an electric mixer, whip the butter on medium-high speed for about 3 minutes, stopping once to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add the cream cheese and continue to whip until fully combined.
- Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the powdered sugar a cup at a time, waiting until it is mostly incorporated before adding more. Once all of the powdered sugar has been added, scrape the sides of the bowl and increase the speed to medium-high and whip until fluffy, about another minute or 2.
- Add vanilla and whip until full incorporated.
Assembly:
- Crumble the cake into each frosting bowl.
- Mix the frosting into the cake until combined. (add in the biscotti now!)
- Roll a scoop full of cake/frosting mix into a ball and place on a cookie sheet—repeat until you’ve used up all the mix. Should make about 50 balls.
- Refrigerate for a few hours or put in freezer for about an hour to harden.
- Melt the chocolate in a small deep bowl – I melt one package as a time as the chocolate will harden before you can dip two packages.
- Take a lollipop stick and dip the tip of it into the melted chocolate.
- Insert the stick into a cake ball, the melted chocolate will help bond the stick to the cake ball.
- Dip the cake ball into the chocolate. (and then in the colored sugar for the flags!)
- Put the cake pop into a styrofoam block to dry.
Also, the logo was done by hand – I’m not kidding. I was pretty impressed with myself, however I had to ask my friend Kendra if it was backwards about four times because I was staring at it for an hour.
