Dec 04 2009

Back with a baking failure!

categorized as cake, disasters

I’m back. Back to blogging, back to baking. Just in time for the fun holiday season! I was going to make cake pops (a la Bakerella.com) for my school Christmas party and frankly, they were a disaster. But since I’m a believer in showing the failures along with the successes, here we go.

You start by baking a 9×13 cake from a box mix. Can be any flavor, but I chose red velvet because it was the most festive. Once the cake has cooled completely, crumble it up in a big bowl.

Then add one tub of cream cheese frosting to the cake crumbles. Mix thoroughly – mix with your hands, it’s the easiest, despite how messy it will get!

Next step is to shape the cake + frosting mixture into balls. Line them up on wax paper and refrigerate them for a few hours.

And here’s where it all went wrong! The next steps involve melting chocolate and coating the cake balls with chocolate. Well, the chocolate wouldn’t stick to the cake balls. The lollipop sticks that I used kept falling out. The chocolate coating went on too heavily and just dripped off. It was a mess. And frankly, I didn’t think they tasted all that great. The combination of cake + frosting + chocolate + decorative sprinkles was just too much.

So lesson learned. I’ll leave this one alone and let Bakerella and all of the other chocolate/candy experts tackle it!

categorized as cake, disasters

6 comments

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Kristen - December 4, 2009 - 3:14 pm

A friend of mine made these a little differently. She let the cake sit overnight and dry out a little then mixed the cake with frosting instead of cream cheese. She used white chocolate to dip them in and they came out perfect! Give it another try :) I’m sure they’ll come out better!!

Annie - December 4, 2009 - 3:16 pm

I did mix it with frosting (cream cheese frosting!) — and the cake actually did sit out overnight. I wanted to make these last night, but got lazy after baking the cake. ;)

Maybe this was just a weird fluke. I’ll have to try again someday!!

mommainpearls - December 4, 2009 - 10:25 pm

omg, this happened to me too. especially the stick part. my sticks fell out of my ghost balls i made for halloween so i just made them into cake balls, no sticks. i was BUMMED

Kayla - January 8, 2010 - 2:52 pm

Hi! Tips: When you’ve formed balls on a cookie sheet, put it in the fridge for a couple hours, then do them in batches. Sometimes it’s easiest to dip the balls in half at a time, so the coating doesn’t stick to the pan and result in the bottoms being pulled off. :) Trust me, when you get it right you won’t be able to stop making them!

Annie - January 8, 2010 - 9:25 pm

Oh, thanks!!! I’ll try them again someday! They just look way too DELICIOUS not to get right! :)

pita - January 21, 2010 - 7:17 am

when you decide to try them again, spoon the chocolate over the cake pop instead of trying to get it all coated by dipping. I have made the cake pops a few times. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, I make them without the sticks and make cake balls instead. If your candy coating/chocolate is too hot, it won’t stay on the cake pop.
One thing you can try to get the sticks to stay is to dip the stick in the candy coating/chocolate then put it in the cake part. once you get the sticks in them, stick them back in the fridge for a bit. Sometimes i stick them in the freezer instead. It just depends on which one has room in it. They defiantly are more cooperative when they are cold though. Good Luck for when you try again.

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Back with a baking failure!