It Looked So Easy on the Internet

Have you been on The Pioneer Woman’s site lately? She has all kinds of links to these adorable cake pops:

How cute is that? I just had to try them. When Bryn’s and Lydia’s (is that grammatically correct?) birthday rolled around last week it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a fun birthday treat to take into their classmates. I had no plans to get all fancy-pants about it. . .after all, they were to be devoured by 24 unappreciative 2nd graders. I decided to just keep them simple and not form the cupcake shape, but to just do a ball, more like a lollipop.

So I studied the recipe, bought the ingredients, shooed everybody out of the kitchen and got to work.

It was a disaster.

It looked so easy! Here’s the deal: you bake a cake according to the box directions. I used red velvet because it was Valentine’s Weekend and it just seemed appropriate. Let the cake cool then crumble it into a bowl. Then you add a container of frosting and mix it all together until the cake can be formed into balls. Refrigerate the balls for several hours before dipping them into chocolate (or white chocolate) and that’s all. Simple, right?

Well. I started dipping those stupid little cake balls and they started falling apart like crazy! They were splitting in half in the bowl of chocolate, making a mess of the chocolate. And the few that stayed together through the dipping stage started sliding down their stick as they were drying. Oh man. I’m not a swearing kinda gal, but I was sorta thinking about becoming one as I watched those things fall apart.

Disaster. And the clock was ticking. I had to leave for the school at 1:30 and by 1:00 I had 5 cake balls that were presentable. Unless you call this presentable:

And here’s the rest of the mess. Don’t you love how in the middle of my panic, I took a moment to take pictures of the disaster. It’s because I really like you guys.

What a mess! But I needed a snack to take to school! Bryn and Lydia would have been so disappointed. . .I just couldn’t let them down. So at 1:15 I made the decision to jump ship on those cake balls and come up with plan B. I called Kroger. Turns out you can buy unfrosted cupcakes for the low price of $7.99 a dozen. Ouch. I needed 2 dozen. I grabbed Ellie, bundled her up, hurried to Kroger and bought 2 dozen unfrosted cupcakes, frosting, and sprinkles and headed to North Elementary. Happy Birthday Bryn and Lydia! You and all your classmates get to decorate you own cupcakes! Isn’t that fun? How exciting!

So that’s exactly what they did! And they all thought it was great. And the five cake balls that were actually presentable? Well, we’re a family of 5, so we each got to enjoy one.

Coming up next: the birthday party and an alternate method to make cake balls that actually worked!!