Making cake pops - a photographic guide!

I've been swamped with work over the last few weeks so my blog posts have been few and far between but I did manage to 'pap' a few photos when I was making some vanilla bean cake pops last week. I thought you might like to see them at their humble beginnings before they become the cake pops that we all know and love...

1. Blend up your cake, I use a mini blended to do this stage but you could also use a fork and a large bowl. I find it helps if your cake is nice and cold as it doesn't clump together as much as fresh cake. 

This is vanilla bean laced cake crumbs before I add my buttercream:

2. Choose your sprinkles or decoration for your pops. I'm a sucker for bright non pareils:

3. Roll your crumbed pops into balls (mine weigh 25-30g each as a guide) Chill and then insert sticks with a little dab of candy melt to hold them in place whilst dipping:

 4. Dip in your melted coating (I use candy melts but you can use chocolate too) and then sprinkle with your chosen decoration. The candy melts dry quickly so be sure to do this straight away or if you forget then you could always give them a blast with a heat source i.e. a hairdryer which gets them tacky again.

5. Devour (no photo here as I got too carried away with the eating to take photos)