I've Made Cake, so I Can Make Cake Pops, Right?

Some things I have never done before: make cake pops, use a mixer. Today I will dive head first into both. This is a task I am going to do completely alone, asking no stupid questions (except maybe to myself) and asking for no help. Seriously, how badly could I screw this up? Well... I did screw up that Reese's dessert that required no cooking, only microwaving, but that could happen to anyone. Right?

So, I read the directions on the back of the box and, no surprise, find myself confused.

"What? I bake it like an actual cake first? I thought they were supposed to be on these sticks?"

To be safe I read it again, a little more carefully, and see the crumbling and mixing with frosting part. I thought the frosting went on the outside of cakes, but evidently I'm melting white wafers for that. Okay. Sure. We'll do that.

First thing's first, preheat the oven. I don't know why anyone would ever complain about preheating an oven. You just turn it on and forget it's on. I do that all the time, even when I don't need to preheat. Okay, it's on and I'm walking away. Next step.

Something I learned the hard way a few years back, before you cook something make sure you have all of the needed ingredients. Nobody wants to throw away half mixed batter. I grab an egg and a measuring cup and a gallon of water because we have that sulfur well water and no one wants a cake pop that smells like you put waaaayy more than the required amount of eggs in it. I splash the water into the measuring cup, oh, too much. Waste not want not, better sip some of the water out. Sip, sip, sip. Still to much? Sip, sip sip. Still too much? What the Hell, water? Sip, sip. Close enough.

Oops, didn't check to see if I had oil. Dammit. Hmm. Extra virgin olive oil or canola oil? Of course, the directions don't say. So I'll assume it's safer to use the canola oil for baking because olive oil is what the Italian restaurants use to keep the Alfredo from ever really touching the plate.

A tablespoon?! People actually measure that out? You know, I bet I could eyeball that. Bloop, bloop. There. That looks like a tablespoon.

Now for the part that I've been warned about over and over. Using the mixer or beater or whatever the proper title of this thing is. Right before I started this process my housemate told me to be sure and put it into the batter before turning it on, and since this is technically his house (he's buying and I'm renting) I'll try to keep from covering his red kitchen in yellow cake batter.

The directions say to beat on low speed for 30 seconds, but the mixer or beater doesn't say Low, Medium, High. It says 1 2 3 4 5. So we're gonna play the guessing game like teenagers in love and put it on 1 for now, and if nothing goes wrong we'll go up to 2.

Thirty seconds of no disaster and I feel that it's safe to turn it off and go to the next step. Scrape the bowl and mix for an additional two minutes. Are you fucking serious? Why do I need to scrape the damn bowl and remix? I just mixed it. Why didn't it just say to mix for two and a half minutes? Do I scrape the whole bowl or just the sides? Do I scrape it into something? Am I scraping the lumpy batter or just the bowl? Am I even supposed to scrape the inside of the bowl?

Whatever, I take a spoon and scrape around every inch inside the bowl whether it has batter on it or not and hold it at an angle so it all pools at the bottom because, surprise surprise, I've selected a bowl that's way too big for this small amount of batter. Is this handful of batter really going to make 12 cake pops? Shrug. We'll see, I suppose.

Let's see... bake for 12 to 15 minutes in 8x8 pan. Hmm... I don't know if this is an 8x8 pan, but it's the only one I have that's deep enough. The others are the flat pans for cookies and french fries, so we're using this and hoping for the best. Let's scrape this strange looking batter into the too small pan and put it in the forty-something year old oven.

Cake batter is in the oven and I've started to type this blog. TIME WARP! Best to get this stuff down before you forget it. I bet I've forgotten almost as much as I've learned over the years. I can't start the next step yet because it involves the yellow cake batter. So I type until I notice that the cake batter has been in the oven for sixteen minutes. Oops. I pull out a lumpy, strange-looking, browner-than-it-should-be tiny yellow cake. Directions say to let it cool completely. I guess I'll sit it on the stove and finish typing my journey so far and come back when I'm finished. Surely it will be cooled down by then.

Did I turn the oven off? Hmm.. no, no I didn't. Well, it's off now, so let's go upstairs where my fiance is litter box training our cute but needy, six-week-old kitten. As soon as I sit on the bed with my laptop the kitten, Pixel, climbs onto the keyboard, opening a ton of windows, and begins to snooze. She didn't even want me to pet her. She just wanted to sleep on my keyboard. Since I'm not completely heartless yet I will allow this tiny kitten to sleep on my keyboard and take pictures of her with my tablet. Because my friends and family on Facebook NEED to see this kitten sleeping on my laptop while I'm trying to blog about cake pops. Who wouldn't want to see that? Don't you want to see that? Here, I'll share with you, too.

Eventually she wakes up long enough to move from my laptop to my bed and goes back to sleep. Seriously, again? How long is this kitten gonna sleep? All day? All night? I just tell myself it's because she's growing and leave her to her cute slumber.

The lumpy, brownish-yellow cake is probably cooled off by now. Time to see what the next step is. I think I'm supposed to crumble it up and mix it with frosting now. Because that makes total sense. Shrug. Whatever works.

Yes, the next step is to crumble up the cake into a bowl and mix with the small frosting packet. I take this strange looking cake, that now has a hole in it because a wasp had fallen onto it, to crumble it and realize it feels like a sponge. That's weird, Spongebob is nowhere on the box. Did I bake a cake or make a home made dish sponge? It even lifts out of the pan easily, whole and intact. It feels rubbery, too. Maybe it's an eraser sponge?

I crumble the sponge-eraser-cake into a bowl, wishing I had not used my largest bowl for mixing the weird-feeling batter, and find the small frosting packet. The directions say to squeeze this packet ten times. Exactly ten. I suppose nine isn't enough and eleven is too much? How did they find this out? Who made a bajillion batches of cake balls just to find out precisely how many times to squeeze this tiny packet of white frosting?

I squeeze and count to ten and dump the frosting in. I thought the amount of cake batter was small, this frosting that I assume is going to act as a type of paste is even smaller. This is all the frosting-paste I need? Really? Was this another variable in the bajillion batches of test cake balls? Whatever, I just grab a fork and stir and stir until it looks the same as it did when I first crumbled it. Really.. it doesn't even look like the frosting made a difference. Huh. Oh well, just following the directions on the box.

Next I am instructed to make tightly compacted one inch balls and place them on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. Really!? Could you have at least listed wax paper up at the top with the eggs and oil in the designated picture area? I have never bought or used wax paper in my life. I don't even think I ever saw my mother use it come to think of it. Looks like we're improvising. I wrap a cookie sheet in aluminum foil and make the tightly compacted balls, aiming for twelve, and line them up on the foil. And I came up with nine. Yes. Three short. Then again, that one looks like it's the size of two or three, and everyone is trying to pre-claim it as their own. (Part way through this process two friends came over bringing video games, DND supplies, and beer. Good times.) So none of them seem to be the same size and I shrug and leave them be. Next step.

Place half the pack of white wafers into a bowl and melt in thirty second intervals, stirring between microwaving. Do not overheat. This feels tedious. How are these so popular?

So I microwave and stir and microwave and stir and microwave and stir..... I swear the microwave goes off as soon as I sit down. Is thirty seconds really even doing anything?

Next step, dip each stick half an inch into the newly melted white puddle that sucked out years of your life in thirty second intervals and push into each cake ball. I believe this is to help keep it on the stick. I think I'd like to have direction that tell me why I am doing these seemingly odd steps. 

Dip, stick, sip, stick, dip, stick.... okay done. And now we're refrigerating them for fifteen minutes or so. One of my friends that brought the DND and beer asks if they're ready to eat now and I have to break his heart and tell him no. At least everyone is getting excited about them.

Next step, add the rest of the white wafers to the frosting you just used for dipping and sticking and melt in THIRTY SECOND INTERVALS. Who picked out this dessert again!? Oh yeah, my fiance...

So, I'm back to melting and stirring in thirty second intervals and trying to cook Hamburger Helper at the same time (some of the hamburger meat may have burned, I dunno, they all ate it). Finally it has a smooth-ish but still kinda tough consistency so I grab the cake pops out of the fridge and put dinner on simmer with a lid.

The first one I grab and dip it into the new frosting and give it a spin like you would a fondue fountain. I pull my stick back up and there's nothing on it. What the Hell? There's a ball cracked completely in half laying in my puddle of melt-me-in-intervals frosting. I try to poke the stick trough another side but it breaks again. Damn it all. I scoop it out with a spoon and offer it to my fiance who shakes his head. Whatever, I'll eat it myself. Hmm... not bad, really. 

Since the obvious step didn't work I have to improvise yet again. So I scoop a bunch of the frosting up with the spoon and kinda try to frost it the way would a cupcake, twisting the frosting and the spoon until it's spread poorly across the lumpy ball. I say fuck it and throw some sprinkles on it and lay it on the tray.

That same drinking friend is pretending to complain that it doesn't look the way it does on the box and everyone ignores him. I frost seven more with similar results. Patchy, lumpy, sprinkles look crazy. Whatever. In the fridge. They need to be in there for about 45 minutes. So I walk away and forget that I made them until my house mate comes up stairs much later and says:

"These are fucking delicious!"

I'd call that a success. They may not be pretty enough to sell at Starbucks for the same price as the whole box of mixes but they're "fucking delicious".

I don't have a picture of the end result because they were eaten so quickly but I'm sure they looked something like this:

All things considered, I'd say my cake pop adventure turned out well. Oh, look, we have a second box. Joy.

-Tome Raider

                                                                 Cake pops delicious!