Wednesday 5 January 2011

Christmas Tree Cake Pops

For those of you who have not heard of the goddess that is Bakerella, I suggest you pop on over to her site and let your jaw slowly fall open.


When I saw her christmas tree pops, I just had to have a crack at it myself.  It's all been a bit hectic over christmas, baking-wise so I don't have many photos of the actual processes, but I reckon it's quite easy to figure out....or you could pop over and see how Bakerella does it!


I took a load of leftover cupcakes that were still good to eat, but a few days old and chucked them in my mixer and kept adding buttercream until they the mixture was at a consistency where I could mould it into little cone shapes.


I then stuck a lollypop stick in the end of each one before placing them on some baking paper on a tray and into the freezer where they remained for a few weeks, until it was time to dip!


When I took them out of the freezer, the sticks weren't quite secure enough so I pulled them out, dipped them in melted chocolate and then stuck them back in.  The chocolate dried instantly as the cake was still frozen.


To coat the cake, I used white candy melts which I melted in the microwave and then coloured green using gel food dye.  If you're not familiar with candy melts, they come in all different colours and and flavours and look like giant chocolate buttons.  They have the consistency of chocolate but they are much easer to use and melt because they don't need tempering like normal chocolate does, so that it dries shiny.


When this was ready, I took a cone of cake and dipped it into the chocolate, making sure that the whole thing was completely covered quite thickly.  I imagine there are a number of ways to achieve the spiked effect, but I found I got it looking best when I used the back of a spoon which I kept tapping lightly around the chocolate.  You've got to be really quick with this bit because the chocolate dries really quickly.


Then finally, I stuck on some sprinkles for lights, a dash of glitter and a little star, on the top.

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