Cake Pops

I originally saw these mentioned somewhere on a website I check in on, and wanted to give them a try. So I started looking for the recipe. There's a lady that does them in all sorts of shaped designs and they are soooooo cool. They are called Cake Pops. They're made with cake and icing mushed together, formed into balls, speared with a stick and dunked in candy melts. The ones she does use tiny candies to form them in to shapes and characters. I wasn't sure what I was doing with them, other than just trying to make them, so I made them with Red Velvet cake and cream cheese icing, hoping that Dave would eat them when I was done. He likes Red Velvet and cream cheese icing, so, I'm hoping he likes them. A lot. I tried them and boy are they sweet! WAAAAY sweet!

The baking and mushing parts went ok. Spearing, also went pretty well. The instructions say to put the stick in the melted candy before inserting into the cake ball to sort of 'glue' it to the cake. As I was doing that, I thought that step seemed a bit unnecessary, they seemed to be sticking in there pretty tight, so some of them, I skipped the gluing.

Next was dipping them in the melted candy. I had some problems with that. The candy wasn't cooperating well, or I just need a LOT more practice dipping cake balls into candy melts. The white was ok, but the blue just didn't seem to want to melt thin enough, so it went on in a very heavy coating and didn't want to run off. Some of them are not pretty at all!! I had only picked up a bag of each color thinking it would be more than enough, and it may have been if the blue had not given me problems. Two of the balls fell off the sticks as I was coating them with the blue. One with and one without a 'glued in' stick. So, I'm still not certain if the gluing step is necessary. But neither seemed like I had it pushed in far enough. That could have been the problem. The remaining blue ones have Red Velvet specks. LOL

I ate those two, and then a white one that I bit in half, and now I think I have had way more than my fill of Cake Pops, at least for today. And seeing how I don't foresee a lot of practice on these, I doubt I'll ever do any cutsie shaped ones. I may do some more similar to these with sprinkles and other 'toppings', but that's probably about it. I'm having way better luck with the cinnamon almonds. AND I am thinking of trying a cocoa roast almonds variation, something similar to the Emerald brand.

Happy Turkey Day!!!

Well, it's only been a month since my last post, I guess that's a little improvement since the last time. Not really much going on though.

Hope everyone had a nice relaxing day. We did. Watched the parade this morning, then some of the dog show, went to dinner with dad a while ago, now back home to relax and call it a night. Dave's brother and his wife are home for Thanksgiving, so we got to spend some time with them over dinner last night. It was nice seeing them again.

We did trick or treating with the puppies around Halloween, every year we get less and less kids. One bag of candy will probably do us next year. The puppies got their new annual Halloween bandanas. I made them differently this year, and I really liked how they came out. Usually I just make a square bandana and tie them. They end up twirling and spinning around. This year, I made them so that they slide over their collars. They looked nice.

We got everything done in the garden. If you recall, Dave had canned some peppers so we have those for the winter. I was going to freeze some of the brussels sprouts, but we ended up eating them. HA!!! They were just so good!! I have one dinner's worth left that we'll have tomorrow, then that's it for the brussels sprouts. We're definitely going to plant those again next year.

My latest new thing to try was making cinnamon almonds. We get them at the ball games, and I kept saying I wanted to try making my own. I came across a website with a recipe to do them in the crockpot and they are great!!! I made a couple batches today while we were home. The house smells all cinnamony now.

Last weekend we ventured to Chambersburg, and seeing that gas is back up to nearly $3 a gallon again, that will probably be one of the last trips we will be making any time soon. I told Dave I had no ideas of anything to get him for Christmas, so we were going with what is becoming a new tradition and we went to Boswell's to get a new pipe for his collection. He didn't have any problem with that :-). He's not the only one I have no ideas for though. So between no ideas, and no money - Christmas shopping should be easy! LOL

Other than that, same stuff, different day.