Week 15: Mint Chocolate Cake Pops

Just when you thought cupcakes were the cutest most adorable, sometimes saccharine member of the dessert world, someone came up with the idea of cake pops. Tiny little morsels of cake with the frosting already mixed in, covered in coloured chocolate and often adorably decorated, they're almost too cute to eat.

My cousin VP has an odd affinity for making cake from cake mixes. I'm really not sure why, but for some reason she brings up the idea of baking up some Betty Crocker Supermoist every time I visit. Not to say that we don't have fun baking from a box, there was the marble cake fiasco of  2010 when the batter over flowed all over the oven combined with the fact that we forgot to grease the pan. This time around, Nonna did us a favour and baked the cake for us, which means that there was plenty of chocolate cake lying around, just waiting to be enjoyed.

I took some back to school last weekend and already had in mind what I was going to do with it, cake pops of course! I watched a few instructional videos on Youtube and I was set. I made some buttercream frosting from scratch and added in some peppermint extract for good measure.

These were so much fun to make and made for a super cute belated birthday treat for my BFF SP.

Mint Cake Pops

Yield: ~50 pops

• Cake mix, as prepared (I think I had about the equivalent of about 1/3 of the box)
• 1-3/4 cup candy coating wafers
• Food colouring (see note)
• Frosting of your choice (see below for recipe)

1. Crumble cake into a large bowl
2. Mix with frosting and form into balls (I used a level tablespoon to measure)
3. Allow to freeze (at least an hour)
4. Melt candy coating in the microwave
5. Add food colouring if using
6. Using toothpicks or lollipop sticks, dip cake pops into chocolate, allowing extra to drip back into bowl
7. Allow to dry by sticking into a block of styrofoam or box

Note: I only had white chocolate melting wafers on hand and wasn't sure if it was safe to use liquid food colouring with it without the chocolate seizing. Don't worry, it is.

Buttercream frosting

• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1/4 cup butter (softened)
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 2 teaspoons peppermint extract (optional)

1. Mix all ingredients until light and creamy

Per pop:

77 calories | 7.8g sugar | 4.2g fat