Friday Favorites | No. 2

Friday, March 30, 2012

Yay!  It is finally Friday...I am not sure why I am so excited because I have to work tonight, but I guess ending the week is still something to be excited about.  Here are five of my favorite things from my week!

1.  Last night I made some spring vanilla cake pops to bring into work and I think they turned out pretty!

2.  On Pinterest I found this great idea for orange bunny rolls that would be perfect to have on Easter morning and would be sure to bring a smile to any ones face!


3.  I have a new found love for the site Etsy and found this cute American Girl doll skating outfit!  Makes me wish I was eight years old again.


4.  Spending time with my little man Japser always brightens my days!


5.  My last favorite thing about this week was that both of my classes were canceled...always a nice unexpected surprise!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Shamrock Cake Pops!

Thursday, March 15, 2012


 With St. Patrick's Day  just around the corner, I thought that this would be the perfect time to try out my new cake pop pan that I recently bought.  I am not a huge fan of the cakes pops that are made by mixing cake with frosting and then rolled into balls...its just something about the texture inside that is not really my thing.  These cake pops that I made, however are baked and very yummy!

To start, pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees, then spray your cake pop pan with non-stick cooking spray.  Once that is done you can set the pan aside and start focusing on the batter. 
I used my vanilla cupcake recepie for this batch, but really any cupcake batter would work out great in this pan.  Since I was also making these for St. Patrick's Day, I thought it would be really cute to add some shamrock sprinkles and white jimmies to the batter and make sort of a fun-fettie cake.

Once the batter is all mixed, take a scoop or spoon and fill the bottom half of the pan with cake batter to the top.  Then take the top half of the cake pan, attach it to the bottom pan, and incert the two little clips to hold the two pans together. 

Place the cake pop pan in the oven on the center rack and bake for 20-25 minutes or just until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.  Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes.  Open the cake pop pan and remove your warm pieces of cake and let cool on a rack for about 30 minutes.

After the cake balls are cooled you will need a bag of chocolate melts in whatever color going to use.  I used green chocolate melts for these cake pops to go along with the St. Patrick's Day theme.  Place your chocolate microwave proof bowl and heat for 30 seconds and then stir.  Continue until chocolate is melted (mine took about a minute total to fully melt). 

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and make sure you have your melted chocolate, candy sicks, and cake balls ready.  To help the cake balls stay on the sticks I dipped a little part of the stick into the melted chocolate and and then stuck the stick into the cake ball.  Once all the sticks are in, let them set for about 5-10 minutes or stick them in the refridgerator to speed up the process. 

When the sticks are firm in the cake balls, hold the stick and dip the cake ball into the melted chocolate.  Cover the whole ball and tap off any excess chocolate, place down onto the parchment sheet, and then cover the tops with sprinkles like I did or you could drizzle melted chocolate in a different color, chopped nuts, etc to the tops of them.  Now the hard part is letting them sit until chocolate has completely set, but once its hardend, remove from parchment paper and they are ready to eat!

When you bite into one they are perfeclty moist and the coating of white chocolate is just the perfect amout of "frosting" or sweetness to them...its like biting into a little piece of heaven.  These little cake pops are great and can be made for any holiday, special ocasion, or just as a mid-week treat!
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