Strawberry cake pops a go go

There's nothing like seeing a ripe, juicy strawberry in the garden on a warm Spring day... especially if the strawberry in question is actually a cake pop.

Oh yes. Cake pops invaded the garden today, but only for a photo opportunity (such showoffs).

They then had a trip across town to Hobart's premier microbrewery, but that's another story.














I saw these in the same Cake Pops book that got me making spring chickie cake pops - see previous post - and because I had some leftover mixture ready to go and also happened to have some bright red candy melts, I had to give them a try.

So today I had the mixture already rolled into balls and frozen. I defrosted them and re-shaped them into strawberry shapes (a sort of wide cone). Then I put them back into the freezer for 15 minutes or so, to firm up again.

This is a particularly ugly picture of my hand.

Next I wanted to make a leafy top for the strawberry. The book recommended you do this by piping liquified green candy melt into little flower shapes and letting them dry out, but I thought it would be a lot easier to make them from rolled fondant, tinted green. This is the fondant being tinted.

After the fondant was tinted I rolled it out and used a flower shaped cutter to make a few little leaf shapes.

Then it was time to get dipping. I melted the candy melts according to packet instructions and when I had a nice smooth melted mixture in the bowl, I balanced it precariously inside another bowl full of very hot water. This failsafe system adds maximum risk to the operation, because if you get a single drop of water into your melted mixture, it will seize up and be unusable.

I dipped the stick in the mixture first, then stuck it halfway through the cake ball and dipped the whole thing carefully back in the mixture...

...Carefully smoothing the mixture right up to the edges of the stick with a spatula.

Then I removed it from the mixture and started to tap it gently on the side of the bowl. This allows the extra mixture to fall off in thin streams and gives a smoother surface finish. A few rotations of the stick helps to make it smooth all the way round.

Then I sprinkled some dark chocolate cachous on the surface of the pop to look like the seeds of the strawberry....

... And stuck them into a bit of styrofoam to dry. They only took about 10 minutes, and were quite easy to handle after that.

I couldn't resist taking them out into the garden for a natural setting...

... But their final destination was never really in doubt.
















FAQs
What I learned from my cake pop experience:

1. When tapping cake pops on the bowl to get the extra mixture off, you will get splatters of bright red mixture all over your clothes, hair, bench tops and floor.
2. The red mixture has approximately the same sticking and hardening qualities as superglue.
3. Dark chocolate cachous look a lot like peppercorns.
4. Don't buy mixed dark and white chocolate cachous unless you want to spend half a day sorting them individually, with tweezers.
5. Matching your popstick colour to your candy melt colour means not having to apologise for messiness.
6. When using styrofoam to let the pops dry, a precarious balance situation is created which can have dramatic consequences.