Cake Pops for Free the Children

It seems that everyone I know including me has had something going on in June. I've had to make cupcakes for a volunteer tea (which we're completely adorable but I forgot to take a picture sorry!), and just recently I made mini cupcakes and cake pops for a charity market event with my best friend over at For Goodness Cake.

Our school has been working with Free the Children an organization that strives to help people in need. We have gone as far as being able to adopt a village and be able to make a direct impact on peoples lives. With this organization all you have to do is choose a village to help and a way to help them whether it be through poverty, thirst, exploitation or disease. My school chose to work with Haiti and to focus on thirst. To raise money for Haiti we put on a Haitian market where students can sell items and other people could come and buy the wares. All the money would go to this wonderful cause and help people that are less fortunate than us.

When me and my friend started helping to organize this, it wasn't that hard for us to decide what to sell, we were going to bake of course! Now both of us had made cupcakes before and were not scared at all by that but we decided to take on a new challenge... CAKE POPS! These things are probably some of cutest things you will ever lay your eyes on. But cute comes at a price, and these little morsels of wonder are very time extensive. It gets very messy and very tricky, well at least it did for me.

It seems as if they would be easy enough to make; you roll cake into balls and then you dip them into chocolate. Easy enough right. That's what I thought to but they are a lot harder than meets the eyes. While we were making them we had a few casualties. But for the most part they turned out OK. They're not stunners and no where near the beautiful ones that Bakerella makes. But hey for the first time I'd say we did OK.

One thing we noticed when we were making them is that some of them were getting this weird cracked kind of look, and you know what? I thought it was kind of cool looking... it gave it a nice textured look. And we didn't even try to. Now with out further a do I present to you a recipe for cake pops. Enjoy!

Cake Pops

Yield 40-50 cake pops

Ingredients:

• 1 boxed cake mix (and all the stuff you need to make it)
• 1 can of pre-made frosting or 1/2 cup of homemade
• 2-3 bags of candy melts or you can use chocolate chips
• lollipop sticks 

1. Bake cake mix according to directions
2. Let cake cool then crumble it into a big mixing bowl
3. Mix in half a cup of icing into cake. Make sure not to put in to much icing otherwise the cake balls will be to soft and will fall off your lollipop sticks
4. Roll cake and frosting mixture into balls with about an inch in diameter
5.  Melt candy melts in your microwave in 30 second increments until smooth
6. Dip a lollipop stick into the melted candy melts so about an inch of the end is covered in chocolate
7. Immediately push into pre-made cake ball. Repeat with the rest of the cake balls. Freeze cake balls for about 15 mins
8. Now this part may sound like the easiest but it's difficult. You dip the cake balls into the melted candy melts. Be careful not to move it around a lot in the candy because it could fall off. Be gentle. And if they do happen to fall off the stick just scoop them out with a spoon and set it on parchment paper.
9. Once the cake ball is covered place it on parchment paper to let the coating harden. To speed up the process you can place them in the fridge. 

Resource : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpIifr0VOxY
Photographs Courtesy of Steve Eymann

Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

 "Number one, I absolutely love making chocolate chip cookies. I mean, it's fun. It's exciting. Beyond the fact that I love making them, I love eating them. "

Debbi Fields

Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Yield 16 Big Cookies

Ingredients

1 cup softened butter
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 tsp vanilla
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Stir together flour and baking soda and set aside
Beat butter for 30 seconds then add both sugars and beat on medium speed for 1 minute
Add the eggs and vanila and beat for 1 minute on medium speed
Add half the flour mixture and blend on low then add the rest of the flour mixture
Using a wooden spoon or spatula mix in chocolate chips.
I like to line the cookie sheet with waxed or parchment paper but you don't have to.
Use an ice-cream scoop to get evenly sized cookies and leave about 2 inches or 5 cm between each cookie.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown

Slightly adapted from:
Better Homes and Gardens Step By Step Kids Cookbook
Pictures taken by: Steve Eymann

Wilton Class Cake

So  me and my best friend Emily and I have taken Wilton Cake Decorating class to learn a lot of different techniques for decorating cakes. There are four classes all focusing on different things from butter cream to royal icing to fondant and gum paste. In the last class i took i made this cake that i thought was like my best in sooooo long. I made it as a 6 inch and thank God i did because the inside was absolutely deadly! It was a brownie cake with fudge frosting. The recipe for the cake was from Wilton as well. Tell me your thoughts on the cake do you like it as much as me? By the way if you wondering the flowers and decorations were all made from fondants and gum paste... and sprinkles:)