The Happy Plates: Chocolates & Cake Pops & Cookies, OH MY!

I've been hard at work with the gnomes up in my treehouse so here are some of my recent creations minus the king cakes, and the king cakes, and the shipped king cakes. Don't worry! I will give my king cakes a shout out soon as the season's over, I mean they're the bread winners, gotta show 'um some love.

Round 1 Cake Pops - for my own birthday party

CAKE POPS

Left over cake or brownies (hopefully made from scratch)
Icing (preferable homemade buttercream - recipe to come later, I use cream cheese icing for the brownies but you get creative with anything - peanutbutter, sour cream, honey, etc.)

Chocolate
Parafin Wax (optional - but I'll tell you why)

Lolipop Sticks (found some at Walmart but I know they also have them at Hobby Lobby)

I did 2 round of cake pops. The first round I used left over yellow cake which was so moist I didn't even need to add icing to get them to form balls & left over brownies that were iced with cream cheese icing.

Sour cream crumb cake with Italian buttercream

The second round, I used left over sour cream crumb cake with "gone-wry" Italian buttercream (a meringue-based buttercream). I messed up this buttercream a while back but the flavor was still amazing so I thought I'd salvage it here. After the balls were formed, I refrigerated them for 15 minutes & moved onto the chocolate.

My 1st round I went through the tedius task of "tempering" the chocolate. Now, I didn't do the traditionals heat it up, cool it down, heat it back up to 88 degrees (I don't have a infrared chocolate thermometer or a marble slab...gift idea?...so that was not an option). Instead I took a tip from Alton Brown (my food science hero) after watching his special on chocolate, tempering is all about the crystals. He says to just warm up the chocolate to 90-92 degrees before dipping and that should do the trick...but again I have no chocolate thermometer so I thought...

When they make sugar from sugar cane, they start off with a supersaturated soup and only need to add 1 sugar crystal for the whole thing to form solid cystals. With that knowledge, I tried my own chemistry-based technique (not really sure if chocolate experts would agree with me here but it seemed to work).

Method 1:

I melted the chocolate chips (flavor of your choice, I found dark overpowered my cake but went well with my brownies) in a double boiler until all was melted into a thin liquid (not worried about temp really). I figured out after a few tries that it was a good idea to dip the sticks in the chocolate then insert into the cake/brownie balls & let them dry before moving on to the next step.

When I was ready to dip, I removed the chocolate from the boiler & added 1 chocolate chip (seed crystals) then quickly mixed it in until it was melted. Then I dipped the cake pop in, I had to twirl & tilt it to get it all covered which is why having the sticks set was a good idea. Then I held the pop at an upward 45 degree angle with my left hand, and tapped my left hand gently with my right hand to get the excess chocolate to drip off. After one big drip comes off, I let them to cool.dry in a cardboard flat that I poked holes in with a wooden skewer. If you are going to top them with any sort of sprinkles, this would be the time.

The only pain with this method is that the chocolate will only stay thin for 2-3 pop dips, so you have to put it back on the boiler get it thin, add your seed chip & continue. Beats tempering though and you will get a shiny chocolate.

I'm thinking next time I will try keeping the chocolate on the double boiler the whole time and just continuing to add "seed chips" every 5 minutes or so.

Method 2

Even though method 1 was alot easier than tempering, its still a pain to keep reheating the chocolate BUT you can avoid this all together. For round 2, I just melted 1 bag of chocolate with 1/2 block of parrafin wax. What does parafin wax do you say? It's super shiny & thiner when its melted. Therefore you don't have to mess with the chocolate at all. Sacrifice = less crisp hardened chocoalte & less pungent flavor.

I also like to add a dash salt &/or nutmeg to my melted chocolate in both methods, it enhances the flavor of the chocolate so much but note that neither of these will dissolve in your chocoalte. You will be able to see the little grains, which I didn't really care about since my motto is flavor trumps looks.

Another good tip here for both methods is to use a crock pot as the bottom of your double boiler, the heat is low and more even than a pot on the stove.

However, you can avoid both methods 1 & 2 by buying candy wafer which come in varoius flavors and colors. These you can just melt and not worry about chocolate seizing at all....I bought some vanilla one's for future runs. The few extra dollars are worth my time :)

Yum!

CHOCOLATES

Russell Stover....psh I can do that.

I did my chocolates at the same time as rounds 1 & 2 of my cake pops using method 1 chocolate on my heart chocolates (which I used a heart shaped ice cube mold for) & method 2 chocolate on my "mini muffin tin" chocolates. But really, these were all about the fillings. I found method 1 worked best for the chocolate candies because chocoalte should snap when you eat a filled chocolate candy (this was missing with the parrafin).

For both types of chocolates, I filled the molds with chocolate and shimmied/shook the chocolate around to fill the mold on the top & sides. Make sure to get a thick layer of chocolate on all sides or you will pay the price when you try to remove them from the molds. Then I left them upside down for the excess chocolate to drip out. After about 5 min, I took my offset spatula and removed the excess from around edges of the molds & then put them in the freezer for abot 10 min.

NOW FOR THE FILLINGS!!
My favorite part. I did 4 different chocolate here:

1) Sunflower seed nuts + peanut butter: spruced up the peanut butter with confectioner's sugar, vanilla & salt.

2) Coconut whipped cream + sliced almonds: whipped up some heavy whipping cream & added sweatened canned coconut.

3) Strawberry + cream cheese: sorry yall, these are both left-overs from my secret king cake fillings, but i'll tell you they both involve liquor of some sort

4) Cookies-n-Cream: Bingham's favorite since I was making these for Valentine's day, just white chocolate with mashed Oreos

After filling, I covered the molds with more chocolate and levelled them off. Make sure not to over fill the chocolates or you won't be able to top with enough chocolate.

I found the cupcake molds to work better with removing. I just pushed a knife gently into the side & it popper out. The silicon heart molds were a little more fussy and I had to push them out from the back side....which mean't alot of them broke. For both cases, I recommend oiling the molds.

Just because some broke doesn't mean they aren't delicious!! So I salvaged them. The cookie-n-cream ones didn't break though (we just cut them to taste)... solid chocolates are much easier.

Bingham's Valentines Chocolates - we got our finger prints all over um

Mended Broken Heart!!

Cupcake tin chocoaltes - much less breakage

COOKIES

Royal Icing

I use butter cookies instead of sugar cookies for my decorated cookies. I've gotten alot of good feedback with them. You just have to be careful & make sure your cookies are thick because butter cookies will break more easily. I usually do 1/4-1/2 inch thick depending on the cookie shape.

I've tried a couple of recipes for the icing. My top 2 were Royal icing which uses egg whites & corn syrup based one from I Am Baker. Here's my reviews on the 2:

Royal Icing

Dries quickly

Less forgiving

(because it dries quicker)

Subtle sweet flavor

Phi Mu Cookie w/ Royal Icing

I Am Baker Icing

Dries REALLY slow

(3+ hours, I found it goes a little quicker in the fridge)

Really forgiving

(you can basically remove half of what you've done and start over)

Pungently sweet

Phi Mu Cookie w/Other Icing

5th Birthday Cookies

For both types of icing, you need to vary the thickness. For flooding, add more milk/liquid. For writing/details, add less milk or more powdered sugar.

I think I'm going to stick with the royal icing. Its easier to work with if your fast.

These Star Wars character were kind of fun but time consuming. I put them on skewers becase they served as cake toppers. I used royal icing on these.