Last night I stayed up until two in the morning to create my first cake pops, the desert for my Swedish Xmas food buffet. My Xmas gift to the family on the mountain. Oh, the buffet was soooo tasty. It’s amazing how tastes and smells can recall memories and moods. I’m don’t care too much about traditions – but the Swedish Xmas food is really special for me. You Swedes (or Sweden lovers, or lovers of Swedes) know what I’m talking about: julskinka, vörtbröd, inlagd sill, rödbetssallad… So tasty!

Back to the cake pops. I discovered this festive way of presenting cake on Instagram some time ago. Instagram is a really great medium for discovering new food and particularly sweet treats… cupcakes, macarons (they look great – but taste… nothing, lots of artificial colouring also) and all kinds of cookies… you name it. From what I understand from a bit of googeling, Bakerella is the queen of cake pops. But what really inspired me to make cake pops was the food blog, Food Coma written by Emma Chapman.

So yummy! My first cake pops! 

I made two kinds cake pops. Everything lactose free of course. The pop cakes I made were made on crushed neutral sponge cake mixed with the variations below, shaped to balls, cooled down in the fridge, stuck on the stick, frosted and decorated.

The first variation I tried was pumpkin and cocos jam, rum and philadelphia cheese filling, and white soya chocolate frosting (from Zotter, one of the most well known Austrian social ventures) and sprinkled cocos. The white soya chocolate was very easy to work with, but it took a long time for it to get hard, which resulted in a few cake balls sliding down the stick. Rather annoying, but I think the trick is to keep the cake pops cold, almost frozen, when you work with them.

The second variation was with lingonberry jam and philadelphia cheese filling, covered in very dark chocolate, and decorated with the white soya chocolate left overs. The pure dark chocolate was tricky to work with. It took forever for the excess chocolate to drip off. On the other hand it hardened very nicely. The decoration was fun and easy to make, especially when the white soya chocolate cooled downed and thickened a bit.

I stuck the sticks in a circular styrofoam form, which I covered in white napkins fastened with red gift wrap string. It’s fun to experiment with whatever is there :)

There are many steps to make cake pops, all pretty easy. A disadvantage is however that it’s a very time consuming activity, at least for a cake pop newbie like me! If I make cake pops again I will experiment with some other kind of frosting, since the pure chocolate was a bit tricky. I can also add that it was very helpful to watch some Youtube videos with tips from cake pop pros, for inspiration and technique, before getting started.

Now, I have two major projects finished the last few days – the master’s thesis, and the Xmas buffet. (The first slightly more major than the second ;)). So… now I have one or two weeks without any plans what so ever. I don’t know when that happened last time… scary indeed. But mostly an amazing opportunity to rest my brain a few days, and just engage in whatever activity pops up. Now I think I’ll take another bath, and then get some sleep. Let’s see what happens :)

Thanks for reading!

Any cake pop experiences you would like to share? I’m especially interested in frosting ideas, which does not include ready mixes and scary additives :)

xo,
Evelina

Photos: Rupert Pessl (who else!)