Please welcome Kathy Casey Food Studios’ newest Culinary Associate and this week’s guest blogger, Jessica Duncan!
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Okay, I love cake. Specifically cupcakes, but I’d never, ever turn my nose up at anything even closely related to them. When Kathy gifted me a copy of Cake Pops by Angie Dudley of Bakerella.com for my birthday recently, I was thrilled. As in, I wanted to squeal and hug the stuffing out of the adorable creations gracing the pages of the book, but it might have been awkward for the people sitting around the table. I restrained myself – don’t worry! – but at this point I think you can all imagine my abject glee when Kathy asked me to try making them and write a guest review for her blog. Twist my arm and all that.
Suffice it to say, there were two attempts. The first failed miserably. It was like an episode of Survivor crossed with Chopped all in one harrowing afternoon in which each of the six pops I made eventually succumbed to sad ends until there was one lone penguin left standing. And as it turns out, he was evil.
See? Evil.
I decided I could do better (read: my culinary pride refused to let that be the end of it!) and undertook round two. This time, my goal was to make some adorable chimp pops. I baked up a cinnamon spice cake and used dulce de leche buttercream frosting to bind the cake together for the base of the cake pops. Once they were shaped and impaled on their lollypop sticks, they were ready for their dipping. Wilton chocolate candy melts with a dash of butterscotch flavoring made up both the hard candy shell which I dipped in Oreo cookie crumbles to give the little guys a bit of a fuzzy look. The chocolate candy melts, cut in half, also formed the chimps’ ears. White Wilton melts served as their adorable faces and they got candy-coated fennel seeds as their noses and moon-shaped nonpareil candy decorations for the mouths. The eyes were simply edible marker.
As you can see, we did have one casualty, but its sacrifice was not in vain – taste-testing along the way is always useful!
It took almost all afternoon between baking the cake, making the frosting and decorating the pops. Once I was done, I had an army of six sweet little chimp-pops ready for their close-ups. I have to say, it was a long process and making more than six of these at a time is a task for a more patient person than I, but they turned out nicely and were a fun way to spend the afternoon.
Behold, my Cheeky Monkey Cake Pops!
I’m not gonna lie, I adore the fact that they all have slightly different expressions!
And how did they taste? Well, the KCFS team was testing some coconutty cocktails at the bar that afternoon… what better tropical accompaniment! Once we got over the initial hesitation of eating something so cute, the Cheeky Monkeys were utterly devoured. I’ll take that as a ‘delicious’!
In conclusion, I’ll absolutely make cake pops again! I’m already plotting my next creations, in fact!
Happy Cake Popping!
~Jessica
