I am a pretty decent cook. But more importantly, I’m a pretty fast cook. His Hawtness once jokingly said that I get only half credit for cooking since I do only the simplest dishes.
And then one day I said to myself, you know, these dishes are pretty simple but they hold up pretty well. I’ll bet there are other readers/writers out there who wouldn’t mind a few of those recipes–more time for reading/writing, right?
Except, well, our inaugural recipe is really simple but it isn’t exactly fast–not to mention it is also highly calorific. So I held onto it for a long time until I had a book signing recently. And used it to lure folks to my table. I can’t speak to its success as a promotional product for my books, but one teenage boy came around five separate times for the cake pops. Ha!
The original recipe can be found at food blogger Bakerella’s website.
Here’s what you need:
Ingredients:
- One box Red Velvet Cake Mix plus the oil, eggs, and whatnot to bake it with
- One 16oz can cream cheese frosting
- Chocolate bark/coating
- White chocolate chips (I used Nestle because it has directions on the back for how to make dipping chocolate)
- Vegetable shortening to combine with the white chocolate chips during metling (not pictured)
- Popsicle sticks (not pictured)
Steps:
1. Bake the cake according to directions. Let it cool completely.
2. Crumble the cake. (I did mine in my food processor.)
3. Combine the frosting with the cake crumbs. (I used about 3/4 can of the frosting.)
4. Form the cake crumb frosting mixture into popsicle-size balls. And stick the popsicle sticks into them. Now put them in the fridge or the freezer for a while so that the cake spheres firm up a bit.
5. Now melt the chocolate bark/coating according to directions.
6. And melt white chocolate with some vegetable shortening, according to directions.
7. And dip! (And drizzle, if you feel like. I drizzled with a spoon. I have no talent for food decorating, but I don’t think anyone cared. And in case you are curious, the cake pops are standing on a block of florist’s foam.)
The chocolate bark is rather heavy. But chocolate morsels, once melted with some vegetable shortening, is really easy to work with. So this past weekend, for Junior Kidlet’s birthday, we did an at-home chocolate fondue with my teeny tiny crockpot. Yum. And impressed the heck out of the kids. 🙂
(And here you thought the shea butter was an isolated instance of crazy.) 😛
But I promise, next recipe will be really, really superduper simple. And healthy too.
And in other news, HIS AT NIGHT is finally released into the wild today. Phew. That means I’m almost done with publicity stuff and can go back to just writing. What a relief.