Wedding Baking Part 2!

Vanilla Cake Pops for the kids (and big kids….!)

Along with the cupcakes that I made for my sister’s wedding, I decided that if I had time I would also make some cake pops. The reason I gave myself even more work is that there were almost 30 children attending the celebration (all of which were under the age of 9 years old) and I was worried that cupcakes may be a tad too big for some of them, especially for the tiny tots.

I had never, ever made cake pops in my entire life until one day before the wedding – I know how bonkers that sounds now – but decided to give it a go as I had some time to play with, and if they didn’t work out it wouldn’t be the end of the world as I hadn’t actually told or promised anyone that I was going to make them.

I scoured the internet and found this recipe by Molly Bakes: http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/529103/basic-cake-pops. ‘Molly Bakes’ make fantastic cakes and all sorts of other lovely treats over in East London, and they also have a cake pop book out, which I believe this recipe would have come from (see here: http://www.mollybakes.co.uk/).

The recipe was *amazing* – for someone who has never made them before it was pretty idiot proof if you follow all the steps correctly – I never seem to have much luck with internet recipes but I didn’t need to change a thing. The only note that I would make is that I took my cake out of the oven sooner than the 35-45 minutes that was stated on the instructions, but I was using a very hot oven so this timing could be correct – my advice would be to sneak a peek through the oven window after 25 minutes or so.

I decided to tie the cake pop design in with the colour scheme of the cupcakes, so I melted my candy melts and split the mixture into three, using colour pastes to make one batch pale pink, one pale green and leaving one plain white. I also wanted to tie the flower detailing into the design but equally they had to be fun as I wanted the kids to love them, so I freestyled the decoration part with lots of colourful sprinkles and mini icing flowers (I bought mine online from www.cakecraftworld.co.uk/ but you can get similar from most supermarkets). To effectively get the sprinkles on you can either empty them into a little bowl and roll the coated cake pops into them, or you can sprinkle them on from above. Either way work fast as they do dry quickly and once they’re set you can’t add any more decorations. Stand them up until they’re completely dried – you could use florists oasis to stand them in, or even an upturned egg box would do the job!

Once dried pop some mini cellophane bags over each one and individually tie with a ribbon or twist tie – have a look on Ebay for these, I got 50 sticks, bags and ties for a few pounds– and they’re done! We displayed mine on a wire stand (that my sister had also picked up at a car boot sale for 50p) but once they’re dried they’re not too delicate so you can even just lie them on a pretty tray, it doesn’t have to be fancy.

Sorry for the cliché, but the proof is in the pudding and these were absolutely and completely delicious, probably more so than the cupcakes. Most importantly, the kids loved them! One little girl came to ask me if she could have one, and within minutes there were suddenly thirty children running around with cake pops in their hands – to see their excited faces made the extra effort so worthwhile! It is fair to say that a couple of big kids loved them too and the few extra that I’d made kept a few rumbling tummies quiet during speeches ;)

Some tips to make these even easier for yourself:

- If you’re in a real hurry to whip these up you could equally use a ready-made shop bought cake such as a madeira sponge rather than taking the time to make it from scratch.

- If you can’t find ‘Candy melts’ or  ‘Renshaw Simply Melts’ (which seems to be the UK version though you can get both from good cake making suppliers) just melt some chocolate, I would say probably the cheaper stuff (for example Milky Bar or Dairy Milk) would melt best.

- You don’t need to buy fancy decorations to make these look good – some chocolate for covering and hundreds and thousands, or simple penny sweets would look just as effective! If you can’t find cake pop sticks easily just use some lolly sticks instead , use greaseproof paper for covering  and tie them with pretty ribbons – just as lovely and more individual!