A Friend's Farewell

A good friend of mine left for the army yesterday. For the farewell party, I wanted to do something a little special. Originally, I wanted to make a cake, but after looking at ideas, I decided to do a thin mint cupcake. Being short on time, I did what most bakers would call "appalling". I used a box cake. guilty. Basically, I bought some box cakes and added peppermint extract to the batter. How much extract? Oh, I eyeballed maybe 2 teaspoons or so. Add about 2 teaspoons of extract to the frosting as well. If you like a strong flavor, feel free to add more extract.



I also made some red velvet cake pops with 2 different flavored "frostings". One was the normal green candy melt, the other was semi-sweet chocolate. I think I prefer the green candy melt. The recipe is the same as my previous post with cake pops.



Sometimes the cake pops crack on the outside. Remedy: Decorate with chocolate!


Lastly, my friend asked me to make him a pie, but instead of making 1 big pie, I decided to make apple pie empanadas so it's easier to serve and eat. I adapted Emeril's apple pie turnover recipe here. I bought some pie crusts from the market (can you tell how lazy I was today?) and made the filling. 400F for 19 minutes turned out to be a pretty good estimate for these guys.



All in all, it was a pretty successful baking day!

Cake Pops in Green and Blue

I have been waiting to make these little suckers (get it??) for a long time, but never had a special occasion to make them until the other day. Cake pops are ingenious. If you're like me, then a slice of cake can sometimes make you feel so guilty about eating the whole thing. So what does someone invent? A little bite-sized piece of cake that tastes good and looks good too. You won't feel bad about eating one of these because they're so small.

Thanks Jamie for being my hand model. :)


I have to admit, my first batch of cake turned into a disaster when my friend and I added too much frosting to the cake. I originally wanted to make red velvet and strawberry cake pops, but the strawberry frosting was a little too creamy for the cake resulting in a mushy mess. We had to toss the wonderful strawberry cake, but the lesson was learned -- add only half the frosting at first until you're absolutely positive that you need more. Luckily, I had a box of chocolate cake lying around so I replaced the strawberry with chocolate.

These cake pops are surprisingly easy to make, albeit very VERY time consuming. Thank goodness my friend, Jamie, decided to come over, otherwise, I would've been baking away and assembling these little guys for a LONG time. All together, 50-some cake pops took the two of us about 3-4 hours to make! Imagine if I ventured into this project alone!

Here is what you need as adapted from The Hungry Housewife:

1 Box red velvet cake mix (or chocolate cake mix)

1 can cream cheese frosting (or chocolate frosting)

50 lollipop sticks

Candy melts of your choice

Directions:

1. Bake a cake per the box directions
2. Let cool completely
3. Crumble cake or use a fork to scrape the cake. (Avoid the hard sides of the cake)
4. Transfer crumbled cake to a large bowl.
5. Put a can of cream cheese frosting into the crumbled cake and mix until completely combined.
6. Roll cake mixture into balls the size of about a quarter and place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment or other non stick surface.
7. Melt your chocolate per package directions
8. Dip one end of your lollipop stick into the candy melts (works as a glue) and then place the end into the cake ball about half way. (Look at picture below)
9. Place them in the freezer to they get nice and firm.
10. One they are nice and hard you can dip them in the melted chocolate.
11. Place them in a block of Styrofoam and decorate them with whatever you have on hand like sprinkles.
12. Place them in the fridge covered or you can keep them at room temp for a couple of days if covered.

Putting the sticks into the cake pops using the "glue" of the candy melts.


Final product!