Cake balls, cake pops, cakesicles — have you tried them? I know you've seen them. They swept weddings and the internet like a virtual tidal wave over the last few years.
It seems like everyone is getting more and more creative with them. And who cam blame them, they're adorable. When our family's Labor Day Picnic came, I decided to try them myself to see how hard it could be. Hey, if its not too hard, I might be making more of them for future events. So - we all know how to make the cake pops. Instructions are all over the place. A quick google search will yield 15,600,000+ results. Its a pretty straight forward concept, but execution of said concept is slightly more difficult. All the DIY directions I found made it sound SO simple, and fun. Upbeat wording, positive vibes, and a general "you can do it" attitude.
Cake pops are basically little smushed balls of cake and frosting. You bake up a cake, let it cool, tear it into fine crumbs, stir in something to hold it all together, and roll it in balls. Easy, right?
Yea - so, my attempt wasn't a total fail, but you can see from my pictures, I'm a far cry away from Martha. the thing is, they;re a pain in the ass. The crumbling, and mixing part (I heard from actual people, not the DIY utopia online) is the hardest part, wasn't too bad for me. Nevermind the fact that I had to switch bowls half way through because the first one was too small. I also jumped right in with my hands, cause a spoon wasn't cutting it. The hard part for me was keeping the dang things together when I tried to dip them in chocolate. Some websites will tell you you don't have to freeze them. This. Is. A. Lie. Take it from me, it is 100% necessary to freeze the pops before attempting to dip them in hot melty chocolate. Before they're frozen, they're a soft warm dough consistency that just falls off the stick when you dip it. (notice the epic fail blobs above) This is not conducive to a happy working environment. So after a few failed attempts at this, I stuck them in the freezer for a bit. This helped tremendously.
I got them all dipped and even though you can't really tell from the pictures above, the final products were actually kinda nice. I still don't think they're works of art, but they're better than the fail blobs. Now, The point of this post is not to give directions on this DIY, that's all over the place and I dont want to be just another random how to. The point, my friends, is once they were done - I didn't like them. They were a weird consistency and kind of stuck to the roof of my mouth. No bueno. Everyone else seemed to rave over them... was I crazy? Maybe I was jaded because I went through the headache that was making them in the first place. But to me - they're SO not worth it, and even if I outsourced the project, they're expensive and the fact remains I still don't like the taste. Give me a good old fashioned cake or cupcakes any day.
Am I alone in this, does everyone else love them? Or does someone else in the world have a problem with the consistency...?
Am I alone in this, does everyone else love them? Or does someone else in the world have a problem with the consistency...?
