improv baking

I'm not really housewife material. Cooking? Not exactly my strength. Like many girls, I do enjoy baking... but I'm not necessarily skilled at it in any way.

A few months ago I discovered cake pops. Delicious balls of cakey goodness, coated in a layer of chocolate. I had to make them. I stumbled upon a recipe and made my very first batch earlier this month. They were a hit, primarily with my 17 year old brother. He consumed many of them, brought some to school to share with his friends and a special young lady, and the next day there were none left.

With Christmas around the corner, I've already purchased an awesome gift for the brother, but I couldn't resist making some more cake pops for him. Nobody else would ever appreciate my attempts at baking quite as much! With a new house and a pretty new kitchen, baking should be a breeze... right? Well, no, not really. As I spent the morning lovingly making little balls of cake, I realized that I need to unpack a few more boxes and buy a few more supplies. I improvised, because that's what I do. Now I'm going to teach you all how to make your very own delicious cake pops.

1. Bake a cake. Any flavour, any type. You can do it from scratch, or if you are feeling like these take more than enough effort already, you can buy a box mix like I did. I love pre-mixed cake, I don't care what any of you happy baking homemakers say. It tastes delicious. I went with rainbow chip, because that happens to be a hit with my brother. Oh, and it helps if you have a cake pan. I didn't, so I used a casserole dish instead. It took forever to bake, but I'm just that dedicated.

2. Take your cake out of the oven, and destroy it. No, really. While it's still warm, take a fork and mix it all up into a fluffy mess of cake.

3. Ruin whatever chance of it being remotely healthy by adding a rather large glob of icing in whatever flavour you choose. Since they are coated in chocolate, I went with plain old vanilla. Mix it in throughout your cake... it will become sticky, delicious glue.

4. Use a melon baller or ice cream scoop to make little round cake balls. Or, if you are like me and have neither of these, use your (scrubbed and washed) hands. Ewwy, gooey mess.

5. Place the balls on a cake sheet and stick them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Or if you don't have baking sheets or a freezer, I found that tin foil and a cold snowy deck did the trick. There are advantages to living in sub-zero climates.

6. When the cake balls are good and set, dip them in melted chocolate. I used this as an excuse to persuade my fiancé that I absolutely needed to own a chocolate fountain. I intended to take photos but it was a messy process and I was too busy licking chocolate from my fingers...

7. Sprinkle some sprinkles or cookie crumbs or whatever you'd like on your cake pops before the chocolate hardens. Stick them in the fridge to set, and then serve them to your favourite people! Easy as pie! Though I'm really not sure that I'm ready to tackle something as complex as pie at this time...

Wrap them up in pretty little treat bags for a yummy gift... or if you have none and they are for your 17 year old brother who could care less, saran wrap and a bit of ribbon works just fine.

For those of you who read my blog solely to read about my flight attendant adventures, I apologize. I'm trying out the domesticated thing to pass the time during my vast amount of days off between flying. I'm back to the skies again in a few days, and I'm likely to be full of stories just for you!