Bow to Bakerella

I knew these cake pops wouldn't be as easy as Bakerella makes them out to be... but come on. She's MY kind of baker. It's all about the finished product and there is NO reason to make things from scratch that Pillsbury and Betty Crocker have spent years perfecting! The recipe was perfect and the construction of the inside of the cake balls took forever, but was very easy.

Then came time to coat them. I was on a deadline since I was going to be with 30 hungry 16-year-olds that night. I should have known that they wouldn't care what hue I attained with my food coloring, and that would have saved me some time. But the real timing issue I had was with keeping the cake balls cold and the melted chocolate hot. The lumpy ones were from lumpy chocolate. The wrinkly ones were from the cake balls getting too warm and sliding off the sticks, so I had to use my finger to adjust and smooth them. Yeah. Ew. You can also tell that they're being transported in a coffee mug. That was another thing that ate up my time. I didn't have styrofoam ready to go to stick the lollipop sticks in. They kept getting stuck on stuff or sliding up next to each other in the mugs... What a disaster! But my taste testers LOVED them.

I had another day to finish the rest and was more generous with my chocolate, kept it really hot, and kept each cake ball in the freezer until I was ready to dip it. Next time (and yes, there WILL be a next time) I will buy double the dipping chocolate and just go to town to cover up all the lumps and bumps. Oh yeah. Suvey says... DELICIOUS! And the ones that I was able to monogram with black decorator's icing (toothpick style) were so pretty!