Lemon Cake Pops

CAKE POPS! The new cupcakes. I've been wanting to try these out for a while, so what better excuse than Himself's birthday. Trouble is, he doesn't like cake much. Especially really sweet cake. (Chocolate, on the other hand, he could scoff til the cows come home). Still, any excuse, and a boy has to have a cake on his birthday, am I right? He prefers lemon cake to chocolate, so I bought a load of lemons, and off I went.

First off, I needed a stand. Lacking the polystyrene block or a flower arranging oasis, I had to improvise, with a clear plastic serving bowl, into which I plunged a skewer to make some holes. It worked quite well, at the top, but the angled ones around the side meant a few dropped pops later on! Still, all good learning fun!!

Cake Pop Stand. Patent pending...

For the lemon cake, I used a simple sponge recipe from a card I picked up at the Cake and Bake Show, by Rachelle:

1. Preheat oven to Gas 4, and line two 8" tins.
2. Zest 1 unwaxed lemon, and juice.
3. Using a mixer, beat 8oz butter and 8oz golden caster sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add 4 eggs, one at a time, beating after adding each one, then add the lemon zest and juice (I would add more lemon next time, at least 2)
5. Sift in 8oz self raising flour and gently fold it in, keeping the mixture light. 
6. Divide evenly between the two tins and bake for approx 30 minutes until risen, golden and springy.

Lemon Cake by Rachelle

To make the cake pops, I then took one of the sponges, saving the other for a 'proper' cake later. I made some buttercream, with 75g butter and 175g icing sugar, and the juice of half a lemon. I let this refridgerate for a while, then I crumbled up one of the cakes, (sorry Rachelle!) and mixed in the buttercream, a spoonful at a time, until it look sort of pliable - by taking a small handful you can tell if it's roll-able.

Mushed up cake and buttercream

Then I took spoonfuls of the mixture and rolled them into little balls. I would say next time, I'd make them smaller, as once they are covered in decoration, they get a bit weighty and tend to fall off the pop stick.
They then need to go in the fridge for an hour or so, to sturdy up a bit.

Balls of cake

To pop them on the lolly sticks, I then melted some white chocolate, dipped the sticks in and carefully plunged the chocolate covered tips into the balls. Then they need to set so they don't topple off the end. Which, to be honest, a couple did...

Becoming  cake pops...

Then for decoration, I thought I'd make lemony icing. So with the remaining melted white chocolate, I added some lemon juice. Bad idea. It just became a huge ball of doughy sweet un-meltable un-usable goo. Bin.

So instead I melted some proper chocolate, and carefully dipped each cake pop in it to cover the surface. Once that had hardened, I using the remaining lemon buttercream to pipe his name and age.

Whose birthday is it?

How old?

Of course, I didn't have enough brown chocolate to cover all of them, so I just played with some drawings with the lemon buttercream again. Lots of fun to make and decorate, but very sweet. The sponge on it's own was really nice though, yum!

Guess who?

And the other cake was quite nice too!

All my Birthday Cakes can be seen together on my Pinterest page.