Cake balls are usually made with leftover hardened cake. European (American) style cakes are usually made with flour batter. A good example is the pound cake. Pound cake is a mixture of a pound of butter, a pound of eggs, and a pound of flour then baked in four loaf pans. Each loaf is also a pound in weight. Thus the cake is named the pound cake.
Pound cake is fairly dense. It is easily crumbled into pieces. Buttercream or chocolate is added to the crumbled cake, shaped into a ball or other shapes, and covered with frosting to transform the pound cake into cute and delicious little desserts.
Cake ball with a lollipop stick is a cake pop! There are many cake pop recipes in the US which stress the decorating techniques and ingredients to make many different beautiful cake pops. Some of the techniques may be too difficult for the home cooks so many semi-finished decorating products are available to make the process easier.
Although these semi-finished decorating products are convenient to use but they usually contain many additives to order to extend the shelf life. Grounded cake shavings, pre-made frostings, colorful candy pieces (to be melted to make the hard shell on the cake pop), chocolate sprinkles, and edible paint all contain hundreds of species, artificial coloring, preservatives, and other unknown additives.
Out of the fear of ingesting these unhealthy chemicals, I want to make cake pops with natural ingredients with a tiny amount of food coloring but no other artificial ingredients.
If you do not wish to invest in a cake pop baking pan, use any small mold you prefer. Or simply crumble the cake then reshape them into cake balls.
Cake pops need a hard covering. Chocolate is usually the best choice because it molds around the cake pops. Soft chew candies are also pretty nice but it doesn’t keep its shape well when the weather is hot and humid. If you are using soft chew candy to cover the cake pops, it is best to wrap them in cellophane bags and ship with cold packs.
Ingredients Yield: 24
Butter (softened at room temperature) – 150 g
Sugar – 150 g
Salt – ¼ teaspoon
Eggs (room temperature) – 3 (net weight: 150 g)
Cake flour – 150 g
Cake pop baking pan (24 1.6 in half-round molds per pan)
Steps
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C or 350°C. If you have the non-stick mold, there is no need to grease the mold. Otherwise, please grease the pan according to manufacturer’s direction.
- Cream the butter, sugar, and salt together. Add the egg on at a time. The egg must be totally incorporated into the creamed butter before adding the next egg (see note 1).
- Sift the flour into the egg and butter mixture. Mix gently until the flour is incorporated without lumps. Put the batter into a pastry bag.
- Pipe half of the batter evenly into the 24 half-round molds. Only fill each mold half way. Bake the cake on the bottom rack for 4 minutes.
- Take the pan out (wear oven mitts or use dish towels to protect your hands) and swirl it to let the batter cover the exposed area in each mold.
- Bake for additional 4 – 8 minutes until done. Invert the pan to get the cakes out.
- Pipe the remaining batter into the molds. Cover each one with an already baked half-round cake. Push it down a little so it adheres to the batter.
- Bake again on the bottom rack with only the lower coils on for 10 minutes. If you don’t have separate coil controls, cover the pan with a piece of aluminum foil to prevent the top of the cake from picking up too much color.
- Pick up a complete cake ball and check the color of the bottom half for doneness. When they are done, remove them from the baking pan.
Note 1:
if you don’t have an electric mixer, save 1 or 2 egg whites from the 3 eggs. Only add them in after the flour has been added to the egg yolk/butter mixture. This method can help the eggs incorporate into creamed butter better. Another method is to melt the butter slightly before creaming.
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Tulip Cake Pops
Ingredients Yield: 24
Melted white chocolate – enough to secure the lollipop sticks and cover the cake pops
Cake balls – 24
Multicolored chocolate sprinkles
Pink soft chew candy – 72 pieces
Green soft chew candy – 72 pieces
Lollipop sticks – 24
Steps
- After the cake balls have cooled completely, dip one end of the lollipop stick into melted white chocolate then insert into the cake ball. Let the chocolate harden first before decorating. If you are using bamboo skewers, insert the skewer into the cake first, pull it out to clip the sharp tip, dip into the melted chocolate then inserted back into the cake.
- Dip top half of the cake pop into white chocolate. Sprinkle multicolored chocolate sprinkles on top as stamens of the flowers.
- Cut a piece of pink soft chew candy in half, roll it out with a rolling pan, shape it into a flower pedal. You can also use a pair of scissors to help you shape the flattened candy.
- Wrap the candy around the cake pop. Use 6 pieces for 1 cake pop. 3 pieces for the inner layer; 3 pieces for the out layer. This picture shows the first layer.
- This is the cake pop wrapped with 2 layers of candy pedals. Put the cake pops in a heavy tall glass so they won’t tip over.
- Shape the green soft chew candy into a leaf. Warp the stem part around the lollipop stick. The tip of the leaf should rest on one of the flower pedals.
- If the weather is dry and cool, these cake pops will keep for several days. If the weather is hot and humid, pedals and leaves will start to drop and melt. They have to be refrigerated.
- If the candy’s color is too light, you can also brush them with a little bit of food coloring to make them more intense.
- This tulip cake pop is made with Hi-Chew soft candy (www.hi-chew.com). Each piece of Hi-Chew soft candy has a white layer on the outside which makes each pedal look like it has a white inlay.
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Shumai and Coconut Rice Ball Cake Pops
Yield: 24
Shumai cake pop:
Mix together a little bit of melted milk chocolate with chopped almonds. Dip the top of the cake pop into the milk chocolate mixture. This will look like the ground pork in shumai. Take 2 pieces of yellow soft chew candies, roll them into a round ball then flatten it into a round disc. Cover the cake pop from the bottom up, wrinkle the top edge to make it look like the shumai wrapper.
Coconut rice ball cake pop:
Dip the entire cake pop into melted white chocolate. Add half of a maraschino cherry on the top. Cover the rest of the cake pop with desiccated coconut.
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