Bridal Show Cake Pops!

I had the pleasure of being given an opportunity by One Shot Photo to share some of their booth space at a bridal show in Homer.  Best of all, they schlepped it all down for me. 

After going through what seemed as an endless supply of ideas, I settled on these cake pops. They are the perfect sample size, travel well, and come with their own table service... the stick :)

Here they are all ready to travel the long drive to Homer.

Happy Holidays!

Many of you have probably seen little cake balls pop up all over the place lately. These little guys are my kitchen sink of the truffle world. What few scraps that manage to evade Matt and his big glass of milk are frozen and set aside for this sort of project.

The version above was chocolate cake, chocolate cupcakes, a few vanilla cupcakes, a package of ginger thins that were going to waste, buttercream frosting, cream cheese, and a few Anthon Berg liqueur filled chocolate bottles chopped up for good measure.

The recipe is simple.

Crumble cake pieces, cookies, graham crackers, nuts, or what have you in a bowl. To this add frosting, fillings, jams, or cream cheese to the crumbs. Mix.

You don't need much frosting or cream cheese. A little dab will do it. As you work it the mixture will become tacky and hold together in a ball well. If you add too much it will become slimy. The cake scraps don't need much moisture to hold together. In fact just a splash of rum or liqueur works well in place of frosting.

Make balls with the mixture and set in the fridge or freezer to chill and firm up. You want a dense and tightly rolled ball, anything loose will come apart when you try to coat it.

Melt chocolate or candy coat. Dip the balls and set aside to dry. If you froze the balls remove them from the freezer and allow the chill to come off or the coating will crack.

Had enough scrappy goodness? If not, here is a post from earlier this year.

Happy Holidays!

Luau Party For the TYC Fundraiser

This fun project was for a fundraiser for the TYC in town. It was aboard the Renown Tours Glacier Express catamaran. Their helpful crew even cleared out a few rows of seats to make room for a dance area on board. My son goes to the TYC, Teen and Youth Center, afterschool. They also have camps for school inservice and vacation days, as well as summer camps. My son loves it and always has a great time!

Done plugging local businesses, now back to the cake :)

The cake was a chocolate devils food cake with chocolate buttercream between the layers. On top of that a layer of ganache and then the fondant.

Here is a close up of the button and stitching detail. The buttons were a fondant and gum paste mixture with fondant "threads".

Cupcakes to match. These were a simple vanilla butter cupcake with lemon cream cheese frosting. The flowers were fondant mixed with a bit of gum-tex to make them firm and more durable.

I have lots of cake scraps bagged up in the freezer. At the last minute I pulled some out and made boozy cake bon bons. It was a 21 and over party with a bar on board so boozy desserts were in order. This recipe is based off Bakerella's cake pop recipe. I used scraps of devils food cake and a brown sugar cream cheese frosting with coffee flavored Kaluha in it. Then dipped the frozen balls of cakey frosting goodness in a chocolate ganache and topped with fondant flowers left over from another luau project. As I mentioned, these were a last minute thought so please ignore the finger prints and drips. Thank goodness the lighting on the craft was dimmed!

Here is a shameless sign that Josie from the TYC made for me. Thanks Josie!!

Finally, here is a pic of the entire spread before everyone boards and I head off the boat.