Photo by Audrey Anderson
A tray of assembled cake pops with sticks inserted
By Audrey Anderson
Hometown Weekly Reporter
On the afternoon of Saturday, 8/16, Librarian Reilly of the DTL led a fun workshop on creating delicious and attractive cake pops. Participants learned how to start with store-bought cake and frosting to make cake pops coated with vanilla-flavored white candy melts and decorated with brightly colored rainbow sprinkles.
To start, participants at each table used their gloved fingers to break up store-bought, unfrosted, cake into crumbs in a mixing bowl. Then, they added vanilla frosting from a store-bought tub to the cake crumbs and combined the mixture. Participants at each table then rolled the cake-crumb and frosting mixture into 20 small balls, each about 1 inch in diameter.
Once the balls were created, they were placed on a tray and refrigerated for 10 minutes. The table groups took advantage of the time to get to know each other, relating some fun stories and talking about the cake-pop making process.
Reilly took the cake-and-frosting balls out of the refrigerator and started to melt the candy chips in small bowls in the microwave. Participants covered one end of each stick with melted candy and inserted it gently into a cake-pop ball, careful not to push the stick all the way into the ball but instead, to prevent cracking, stopping when the tip of the stick was in the middle of each ball. The pops were placed on a tray, upside down, and refrigerated again for 10 minutes to harden the candy on the stick and adhere it to the cake ball.
When Reilly had melted about 3-to 4 inches deep of candy in each bowl, the cake-pop makers dipped the cake balls into the candy, letting the excess drip off. They added rainbow sprinkles to the top, while the candy was still melted, and then pushed each cake-pop stick into a block of foam so the pops could harden for 5-10 minutes.
Conversation in the groups turned to the process, including how to dip the cake balls into the melted candy without having the balls fall off the sticks, and how to obtain even coverage of chocolate on each ball. Groups also discussed uses for the pops, including making them into bunnies for Easter, with potato chips for ears and some sort of cotton tail.
Once the pops were hardened, they were placed into plastic bags for transport. The groups thanked Reilly and said goodbye to each other after spending a pleasant afternoon learning to create tasty treats.
