Chocolate Valentine's Day Cake Pops...and a Cheesecake Winner!

I shared with you a few weeks ago some of the baking goodies I got for Christmas.  I thought, seeing as how it's now February, it was time to share the rest! 

This is what your present stash looks like when Santa tells you he's not going to buy you much cupcake stuff this year because you have enough!! If you don't believe that this is a small amount of stash, check out the cupcake goodies of Christmas '10, and Christmas '09.

To be fair other than these cute cupcake cookie cutters, the cupcake calendar, car freshener, heart cases, socks, carriers and shopper most of the other prezzies were general baking related goodies.  My fave was the Jamie Oliver jelly mould set, I have big plans for that - I am a huge jelly lover! My KitchenAid earrings also went down well! I got a rather snazzy set of Nigella Christmas mixing bowls you can see peeking through at the back, and I got a cake pop machine with lots of cake pop paraphernalia! 

I've seen these machines around for a while now but I'd never been tempted to try them out.  To me, cake pops are cake crumbs mixed with frosting, rolled into balls and dipped in chocolate.  I didn't understand how you could 'bake' cake pops and I didn't think they would be too appealing, but after receiving my present I was interested to test them out! 

I became even more excited to make my first batch of cake pops with the machine after I got my monthly email from Squire's and fell in love with their coloured cake pop sticks they sell.  Up until now I had only ever been able to find white ones, and I used to be more than a little envious of all the amazing coloured sticks I see on American baking blogs.  So I snapped up some red sticks knowing they would be perfect for some Valentine's pops! 

Aren't they awesome! I love how vibrant they are, and they are also alot sturdier and more durable than white cake pop sticks I have bought in the past.  My ferrero rocher tray was the perfect size to hold the cake pops in once they had come out of the machine (although I had to cool them on a wire rack first otherwise they were so hot they melted the plastic!)

I was slightly dubious...while baking my first batch in the cake pop machine it smelt exactly like when you make cheese toasties in a toastie machine! I wasn't sure how they were going to taste! but I'm happy to report that the chocolate cake was actually really tasty and moist, and the fact that the machine made all my cake pops so perfectly round and uniform made me a happy baker.  I was pleasantly surprised! 

I dipped them in some milk chocolate and then decorated away with lots of super cute Valentine's sprinkles from Just Bake.  They have a great range of sprinkles, cupcake wrappers and cupcake cases.

My favourite product from their site has to be these adorable double sugar heart decorations. I have never seen anything like these before and they would look great on cupcakes too but I thought they looked especially striking on these cake pops, and they co-ordinated with the red sticks so perfectly! 

I finished off my last few cake pops with some toasted coconut just because I LOVE coconut.  They smelt soo good as we were photographing them, and it was pretty hard to resist taking a bite! 

I think they turned out much neater and more attractive then the last times I made cake pops and oreo pops! 

Here's how to make you own, in the cake pop machine:

Chocolate Cake Pops:

Makes 24

Recipe from Sweet Treats booklet

125g unsalted butter, softened

125g caster sugar

2 medium eggs

100g self raising flour

3 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp milk

For decorating:

400g milk chocolate

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

sprinkles of your choice

toasted coconut

Beat together the butter and sugar in a mixer/bowl until light and fluffy.

Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the bowl and add the milk.  Beat until everything is fully incorporated and the mixture is smooth.

Plug the machine in.  Using a pastry brush, brush a small amount of vegetable oil on the top and bottom plates of the machine to assist with the removal of the cake pops.

When the green light illuminates the machine is ready to use.

Add one slightly heaped teaspoon of mixture to each hole in the machine, filling it to just below the line of the hole.

Close the lid and time them for 4 minutes.  Check them, if they feel spongy and firm they are done.

Leave them to cool for 1 minute in the machine with the lid open.

Remove them from the machine with a teaspoon, then leave them to cool on a wire rack.

Repeat until you have used up all your mixture, mine took 4 batches.

Transfer your cake balls into a ferrero rocher tray or egg box (something that will hold them stable).

Melt 200g milk chocolate with 1/2 tsp veg oil in a bowl in the microwave on low heat, for 20 second intervals until all chocolate is melted and smooth.  Keep a close eye on it as it can burn easily.

(I did mine in two batches as the chocolate can become too thick if it's left out for a long time)

Dip your sticks in the chocolate and then dip them into the cake balls.

Freeze them for about 15-20 minutes, this will help the chocolate to firm up quicker once dipped.  

Transfer the melted chocolate into a small container - you don't want to use a large bowl because you need a good depth to dip your cake pop.  I used a tall milkshake glass which was the perfect size.

Dip your cake pop into the chocolate so it is completely submerged, pull it out twirling it around to flick off excess chocolate.  

Sprinkle your favourite edible decorations on the chocolate quickly before it sets.

I poked holes in the styrofoam blocks that came in the cake pop machine box and then stood up the dipped cake pops in there so that they were upright and secure.

Leave to cool for about 2 hours until the chocolate has set completely.  

Eat and enjoy! 

and you may be here because I was hosting a little giveaway this week.  Thanks for all your entries, I was overwhelmed by your love of cheesecake!! and I'm happy to announce the winner of the Valentine's Cheesecake competition is....

Tammy Chambers! 

Congratulations, please contact me as soon as possible by sending me an email at cupcakecrazygem@gmail.com with your contact details - address and telephone number so that we can arrange for the English Cheesecake Company to send out your cheesecakes in time for Valentine's! 

Sorry to all of those who missed out, but thanks for joining along and hope you will enjoy all the recipes featured on my blog.  If you were some of the people who said you were going to have a go at the s'mores cheesecake do let me know how it turned out! 

The Good Friday Feast: An Easter Dessert Bar!

Don't you just love blogging! This weekend I got left this rather lovely anonymous comment on a previous blog post:

'aren't you a bit fat to be eating cupcakes and drinking milkshakes all day long - get a life'

Way to give someone a complex! if my cupcake eating and milkshake drinking offends you so much, then don't follow my blog, no-one is forcing you to look! and the cupcake eating and milkshake drinking will only continue so I'm not sure what you hoped to accomplish with that comment! 

As you can see the cupcake eating certainly continued this weekend with my Easter dessert bar I gave you a sneak peek of last week! Quite a few things changed from my initial plan due to lack of time and not being able to find half my baking supplies/cake stands that are still somewhere in boxes in my parents cellar! but I was still pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Here are my coconut cupcakes with yellow coconut frosting and a hand made little chocolate easter egg on top! 

I also made a few mini's, topped with what else...mini egg's and thought this little egg box was a cute substitute since most of my stands and cake plates were m.i.a! These lovely little striped egg toppers you see were a gift from my friend Jade.

One of the stars of the shows had to be this Cadbury's Creme Egg chocolate fudge cake which my sister designed for her company as part of their Easter range and she was kind enough to make us one too! 

You can see from this angle the egg in the middle of the cake, made from liquid fondant, even has a golden egg at it's centre! fancy! 

She also baked up some delicious lemon bars...

and my mom knowing my love of polka dots and that our colour scheme was going to be yellow and green bought these cute little bunnies too! 

My sister Mel came up trumps with these flower shaped butter cookies.  You can find the recipe for them here

and one of my cupcake hating brother in law's favourite additions to the table were these oreo pops! It also comes in handy when you have a dad who has his own spraybooth and paint mixing machine and can turn vases and buckets into any colour you want to tie in with your dessert bar - thanks Dad! 

We were slightly disappointed by the Rabbit whoopies, the wilton bunny whoopie pie tin I bought especially should not be recommended to anyone, but they still tasted good! 

My very talented mom helped with the staging of the table and she hand picked these flowers from our garden to make this lovely little arrangement.  

My sister Mara made this lovely bunting which helped tie the table together, and she also saved the day when our Macbook died just as we were preparing the snazzy little labels (yes we forgot the charger cable...which is also why I couldn't blog this little delight for you before Easter Sunday which is what I intended to do!!) and so she made some scrapbooking style ones for us instead.

I realise I am a bit of a perfectionist and like things to be 'just so' and was accused of being a 'dessert bar-zilla' this weekend! so maybe it's time to give them a break for a while! thanks to my awesome family for helping make our Easter one such a success and putting up with me being a stress-head in the lead up to it! 

I hope you all had as lovely an Easter as we did, and were able to spend it with your families too! 

If you want to check out what we got upto you can see it here.

The Birthday Dessert Bar!

I have been planning this for a long time now! I have developed 
an obsession with stalking dessert bar blogs and ogling at how 
amazingly talented the people are who create them! So I
decided I wanted to have a go at one myself.  I decided my colour theme would be brown and green and so to go along with that everything was chocolate or mint or both! I spent the whole of last week baking in preparation, so I baked one new thing each evening and then froze everything up until the big day!  My sister Mara baked the whoopies since she has been busy developing a whoopie pie range for her company so I figured I'd leave it to the pro! and I left the bunting to my scrapbooking pro sister Mel.  My Mom provided the yummy Root Beer, which our whole family is 
crazy about (and of course it fitted with the brown colour theme!) and everything else on the table was baked by me.
I'll give you a little break down of what we had.....

The Cupcake centre piece, these were my favourite mint oreo cupcakes with an oreo baked into the base of the cupcake.  You can also see one of my brand new cupcake stands that I got for my birthday here (I got a whole lot of cupcake goodies as presents that I will blog about in the next few days!)

These were little sweetie jars filled with coconut M&M's, green apple and juicy pear Jelly Belly's and maltesers.

Next we have the fabulous whoopies, they were chocolate flavoured with a cheesecake filling (tinted green).

After that, we have some brownie pops.  They weren't quite the shape I was hoping for, but it was my first time making them so I guess perfection comes with practice! These brownies were covered in melted mint aero and rolled in green sanding sugar.

These are some mini cupcakes that were made using the same mixture as the Oreo cupcakes you saw earlier, but instead of Oreo frosting I went with a basic vanilla buttercream (tinted green) and topped with a little wedge of peppermint crisp (a chocolate bar only available in South Africa...so thanks to my grandparents-in-law for bringing me some over!!)

Then we have the cake pops.  These were mint chocolate cupcakes that are then crumbled to pieces.   I mixed in some swiss meringue buttercream to the crumbled cake mess, rolled them into balls, after freezing they were dipped in green candy melts and finished off with a mini brown smartie.

And last, but definitely not least (I think these were the fave of the whole dessert bar), are the Oreo balls. These are crushed up Oreos mixed in with some cream cheese, and then after being frozen they are dipped in mint chocolate and finished off with a sprinkling of peppermint crisp.

And here we are, the two birthday girls, about to enjoy the feast before us!

I was pretty pleased with how it all turned out! The family were certainly impressed! I know it doesn't look as perfect or as polished as the ones you see on the dessert bar blogs but for my first time I felt it couldn't have gone better!  It did take a LOT of work though, so I think I'm going to try and enjoy a week free of baking...I feel I've earned it, starting tomorrow though because this evening I have been baking birthday cupcakes to take into work!