12 Weeks of Christmas Cookies - Week 6

Snowman and Reindeer Cake Pops

I have been dying to try my hand at Cake Pops.  I have a baking friend, who is also my gym friend, and I like to call her my vodka friend too, after the slightly crazy evenings we have had whilst drinking vodka... another one is due soon, and since its almost Summer down this way, I'm sure there will be one or two. 

So Reindeer and Snowman were the cake pop adventure of the weekend.  We had a blast, we laughed so hard our sides hurt.  I baked a Chocolate cake from the Edmonds cookbook.  (A New Zealand icon and almost every NZ woman has at least one edition in her cookbook collection) The chocolate cake was delicious.  We followed instructions from Bakerellas blog for basic cake pops.

Chocolate Cake:
175g softened butter
1&3/4 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
2 cups white flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1 cup milk

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla till light and fluffy, add eggs, one at a time and mix well.  in separate bowl, sift dry ingredients together.  alternately add flour mixture and milk to butter mixture till all mixed, pour into greased and lined 22cm round cake tin and bake in oven 180C deg for 30 mins or until cake tester spike thingy comes out clean.  rest on wire rack until cooled.

Our chocolate melts were not viscous enough, so we had to add some cacao butter so we could dip and coat properly.  The edible pens I bought were useless, so we improvised with toothpicks and food colouring.

next we decorated.

Snowman:
orange coloured white chocolate rolled into small noses
licorice sticks for the hats
black food colouring

Reindeer:
dark chocolate piped into antelors on wax paper then cooled
M&M minis
Glace cherries, halved

Voila!  super cute cake pops!