Chocolate Cake Pops!
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.
