I wasn't planning on making cake pops until I had some leftover cake: I made delicious pound cake few weeks ago for the Circus Elephant Baby Shower I did here. - It was really yummy, made with Velvet Cake Flour where I combined several recipes and it turned into a textured pound cake, which I really loved!
Well anyhow, I decided to give cake pops another chance. I wasn't too thrilled with them first time around, they were just so bland, sweet that's all. Personally I prefer sweet with a twist, perhaps something sour, coconut, peanut butter, maybe some mint..and now we're talking. All this lead me to this recipe!
STEP 1 - Chocolate Cherry Almond Cake Pops: Cake and Ganache
Ingredients:
* 4 cups cake crumbs, I used vanilla pound cake leftovers
(You can use a whole cake, just make sure you adjust the rest of the ingredients depending on how many cups of cake crumbs you have)
* 1/3cup heavy cream
* 100grams semisweet chocolate
* 1tbl hazelnut liqueur (The twist!!) (omit if making for kids)
* powdered sugar to taste
* 4 oz cream cheese(1/2 a pack)
* 1/4 cup chopped dry cherries
* 1/2 cup chopped cherry preserves
* 1/2 cup chopped almonds
* Dark chocolate for dipping
How to:
1. Make Ganache several hours in advance: Place your chopped chocolate into a heat proof dish, bring the heavy cream to when it is just about start simmer, you'll see little bubbles forming around the edges. Pour hot cream over the chocolate, cover, let rest for 5 minutes. Using a whisk, combine chocolate and heavy cream until you have a smooth shiny ganache, add the liqueur. Let rest for several hours in the fridge, at least 3 hours.
2. Using a large bowl, make cake crumbs using your hands.
3. In a medium size bowl combine together cream cheese and ganache, add powdered sugar if desired.
4. Scrape the frosting into the bowl with cake crumbs and gently incorporate into the crumbs, add chopped almonds, dry cherries and chopped cherry preserves. Using a wooden spoon, combine until you have a thick mixture. Taste to see if you need to add some more sugar.
5. Using a cookie scoop, make balls, form them using your hand and place them onto the baking sheet lined with wax paper.
6. Freeze cake balls for 15 minutes, transfer to a fridge and cool until ready to coat with dipping chocolate.
9. Melt dipping chocolate according to instruction and coat your cake balls. Here is a wonderful cake pop video by Bakerella. I used short candy sticks to be able to use my cake pop as cupcake topper.
STEP 2 - Fondant Ribbon Rose:
As you see I made few fondant ribbon roses to go on the top of the cake pops.
Ingredients:
* fondant - I used marshmallow fondant recipe here
* food coloring, gel
* knife or pastry wheel
* silicone mat
The ribbon roses I made where smaller than the one in the video, to achieve a smaller size all you need to do is scale down with the rectangle size, mine starting rectangle was abut 2 inches long and 0.5 inch wide.
STEP 3 - Attaching Ribbon Roses to Cake Pop:
Ingredients:
* little bit of melted dipping chocolate
* little sandwich bag or disposable pastry bag
How to:
1. Melt the chocolate and fill the sandwich or pastry bag. Make a small opening in the corner of sandwich bag or in the tip of the pastry bag.
2. Gently squeeze several dots onto the cake pop and attach ribbon roses.You may want to hold them in place for a second or two till the chocolate gets little hard so roses don't slide.
You can now either enjoy them as they are or you can use them to decorate your cupcake like I did!
Happy St. Patrick's Day
~♥~
Oh, if you make this or any other goodies inspired by Tutorials you see here, why not you email me your photos?! :)
