Yes, I'm aware that I'm jumping on the cake pop bandwagon pretty late. But to be honest, the idea of cake pops has never really intrigued me. Now, Oreo truffles, those are something else. I could live off of those. But mushing up cake, mixing it with frosting, and then covering it with a candy coating, just doesn't appeal to me. It's way too sweet, even for my sweet tooth.
But when I found myself with leftover cake for the umpteenth time, I figured it would be better to salvage it and make it into something rather than throw it out like I always do. I know, I'm a horrible person. But nobody in my house will eat the leftover scraps of cake I end up with after leveling/torting my cakes. Sometimes they do, and other times I'll feed it to the birds in my backyard, but most of the time, it just sort of sits in a tupperware box or plate for days until I finally just chuck it in the trash and pray for forgiveness. I'm not sure if there's some sort of limit to how many times God will forgive the same sin, but I didn't want to push my luck this week.
So here I am, with red velvet cake pops. And just so you know, these almost didn't make it to the blog. I wasn't even halfway through dipping my first cake pop when I said to myself "This is a complete and utter fail". It really was. You should have seen how the cake pop completely collapsed as I was trying to rotate it in the melted candy coating to completely cover it. And if that wasn't bad enough, it ruined the candy coating along with it, tinting it with speckles of red velvet cake crumbs. I'd like to say that I did everything correctly and that I have no idea what went wrong, but I'd be lying.
The first mistake I made was making the "smart" decision to use a shallow bowl for my homemade double boiler. Even tilting the bowl when I dipped my cake pop in it didn't prevent the cake pop from hitting the bottom, and rotating it only caused it to drag across the bottom even more. The second mistake was thinking it'd be okay to stick my "lollipop sticks" into the cake balls without dipping them in the candy coating first. This step is pretty essential, as it helps hold the sticks in the cake pops. And if you're wondering why lollipop sticks is in parentheses, it's because I actually used these plastic skewers from an Edible Arrangement gift I received months ago. Ghetto, I know. But I'm glad my mom never throws anything out because they came in handy!
The third mistake wasn't really my fault. I did chill the cake balls in the fridge for at least two hours, but apparently, they were still soft. I realized this when I attempted to drizzle the coating over the cake ball instead of dipping it, and the stick slowly pierced it's way through the ball. After that happened, I really did just about lose all hope of things working out. But just when I was about to give up and ditch the coating altogether, I remembered that I had put a cake ball in the fridge that had a candy coated stick in it. So I took it out, and holding it carefully, I drizzled it with the candy coating and let me tell you, it was one of the proudest moments of my life because not only did the stick not pierce through the ball, but the coating was super smooth! I even followed Bakerella's technique of tapping your wrist while holding the stick to remove excess coating and it worked perfectly.
With hope restored, I quickly put the rest of the balls in the freezer to properly chill them. I set the timer to 15 minutes because that's what the cake pop queen says to do, but somehow I got distracted after the timer went off and left the cake balls in there for longer. Not a big deal though, because thankfully they didn't freeze. After dipping all the sticks into the candy coating and inserting them into the balls, I put the balls in the fridge for about 5 minutes, to ensure the sticks would be well anchored. And last but not least, I used a spoon to completely douse the ball in candy coating and then simply tapped the excess off. Oh, and I also left the balls in the fridge and took them out one at a time so that they would stay cool.
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