holiday cake pops

Last Saturday, I woke up and immediately made a chocolate sheet cake. It's been raining steadily for a week here in southern California, so it was wonderful to smell the heavenly warmth coming out of the oven... and it makes the idea of baking cakes for breakfast very tempting.

This cake was baked for a specific purpose, though...I wanted to make cake pops! I've been wanting to try these for some time, and since we were going to a Christmas party thrown by some friends, it was a good excuse to finally do it. It was fun to discover that they're very easy to make--just rather time-consuming, so they're really mostly for special occasions. I'd actually initially wanted to make cupcake pops but had the wrong cookie cutter on hand. It was just as well, however, since it's good to get the hang of what you're doing with a more simple project the first time out.

I was worried the pops would be too sweet with the candy coating or that there would be cake pop disasters, but everything turned out just fine. I only had a couple of really wonky pops (which, believe me, were not wasted by the pop-maker) and they all tasted great. I'll be posting a fuller review of the fabulous new book Cake Pops  in the new year, and I can't wait to try making pops with more shapes and colors.