Tips for making the perfect cake pops

  Making cake pops... piece of cake, right?.
You go ahead and by your candy melts, make your cake balls, dip them in your melted chocolate, and then, before you could even show them to your family,  they are on the floor, or leaking, or cracked... you try to figure out what happened... Go on line and read all you can about them, you did everything like you were supposed to.. or not?
I  have made cake pops for a while now and have learned a lot from my mistakes, so hopefully if you read this you can learn from my mistakes too.
Here are some great tips too if you are making characters cake pops, those are my favorites!

1. If you are making characters , make sure to be inspired by a toy or a tree dimensional figure, not a drawing, this way is easier (trust me) to figure out the details of the character in question. My secret are bubble heads!, yes! they have the perfect shape to study the face you want to make.

2. While making your cake balls , make sure to press firmly enough the cake portion before you make the ball, press , press , press , each time with less presure, then make your ball as you are used to. This will help to blend even better the frosting with the cake, and make your cake pops stronger.

3. Keep it simple, in an attempt to make the perfect cake pop, you can come with an idea that requires a lot of candy, or fondant, or what ever... don´t. keep them as simple as you can , and if you do them correctly, they will look awsome without all that candy on them. Try to shape the cake ball instead of adding candy... that take us to number 4...

4. Use cookie cutters or even your fingers to achieve the desired shape.  Be creative, for instance.. to make the swiper shape, I used a nozzle.. and then reshaped them with my hands.

5. If your shape is a little fragile make sure to dab the cake pops with melted chocolate before you insert your lollipop sticks. I made this with the flounders noses, and the swipers muzzles. using a toothpick and very little candy melt I dabbed to prevent future cracking or melting or other calamity. This is good too, if your cake balls have cracks, just dabb some candy melt in the cracks and leave it to dry completely before you insert the stick in them.

6. Leave them on the fridge for a while. If you allways leave them 30 min. , this time leave them 50. Specially if you are making characters cake pops.

7. This is very very important to prevent candy melt cracking and oil leaking!!! ... You left your cake pops for 50 min on the fridge, now take them out and leave them 30 min. at room temperature before making anything to them!. When 30 min. have passed, then you can dabbed them , and then you can insert your lollipop sticks.  When your cake balls are "warming up" they expand, if you dip them to soon in candy melt they will keep expanding and will crack your beautiful candy melt coating.

8. Tap Tap Tap, and then tap some more. While dipping your cake pops, give them some tough love. They are much stronger than you think! ( and if they are not, then they were going to crack anyway)
tap them to prevent air bubbles that may cause oil leaking and cracking. if you spot one bubble who refuse to go by taping, just poke it with a tooth pick, then tap some more to make the imperfection go away. Tap tap tap your way to perfect beautiful cake pops!


This is what I learned , when I do not follow these steps the results are allways bad.  It works for me and now I hope it works for you!  Don´t doubt to show me your new and perfect cake pops! Please share them with me!

I leave you here pictures of my cake pops... ( my blog is new so I don´t have much)

5 Tips for perfect chocolate cupcakes for beginers

Free at last!!! I did it! I finally did it!

Perfect , light, moist and not to crumbly for fondant chocolate cupcakes...

They say you can allways learn from your mistakes , and with these chocolate babies, believe me! I have learned a lot!!! To some of you it can come across as obvious, to beginers like me it can mean the difference between cocoa yummines and a cocoa mess, so here they are... all the lessons learned from my previous dissasters put into 5 tips:

1) Look for the right recipe:  The one that don´t ask anything you can´t find ... ( for example, in Mexico there is no buttermilk, we are supposed to mix lemon and milk for 10 minutes... it is never the same) the one that has good reviews. A good recipe for begginers, easy to understand and easy to follow. Hey! if it has pictures the better!!! Thanks to a blogg with pictures I found out I was doing my buttermilk wrong!! I was not waiting enough and my milk didnt resemble the one in the picture, another lesson learned... 10 minutes to home made buttermilk is nothing!!!. Find that one recipe you can follow easily.

2)Prepare everything beforehand:  You are beating your eggs, they have reached the perfect texture and then you noticed you didnt sieve the flour, or sugar , or anything...
Try organizing everything you will need before you start your cooking, before even to heat your oven!.
Make time before hand to take out your butter (if needed) to be room temperature, in cases like mine, make your "buttermilk" mix first , keep in hand every other ingredient you know you will use. When your cupcakes are in the oven take out your cooling rack so you dont have a panic attack if you cant find it.

3) Sieve everything: Sift your flour, your cocoa, your baking powder, even your sugar... sieve everything you could possibly sieve. The more the better, so your cupcakes can rise and shine, and be fluffy, and make you happy... sieve! . If you don´t have a good sieve use the strainer. but do it.

4) Use a hand mixer:  Like the beginer I am , I dont bake, I experiment, and I dont like to experiment with a 30 cupcake batch, I go for the 6 or 12 batch instead... so the proportions are not the same, I learned that with smaller portions a hand mixer works best for me, the eggs beat better and faster, my butter blends better with the sugar, and the workout never hurt anyone!.. So, if you are baking in smaller amounts my advice is to use the hand mixer , not the stand mixer.

5) Get to know your tools: My mixer has the standar whisk , that is what I used in all these years, but it also came with other tool, two hooks. Today , tired of all my chocolate disasters , and curious as I am , I decided to give them a try... guess what.. they worked!, they mixed the butter with the sugar with no problem , and they were so easy to clean! . Later reading about hooks and mixers I learned their funtion is that... help bakers do batter. And they were in a box for a year!. So dont be scared to try new appliances... Even if they are not for what you are using them , you cuould allways find new ways to make your life easier.

Here they are... 5 dummie proof tips to improve your first cupcake experience...

In case you need a good and easy recipe for chocolate cupcakes, look no further, here it is, if I could do it you can too! It is from Alma Obregón while looking for star wars cupcakes to share may 4th!... this is the link : http://www.objetivocupcake.com/2011/03/el-post-que-contiene-una-foto-que-hara.html
If you are looking for great recipes it may worth your time to check her page...

And for all of you that dont want to make the effort of reading and translate here is the recipe in english:
( you will have to convert to onz. and Fº)

Ingredients:

- 115 gr. All purpose flour
- 120 gr. butter at room temperature
- 2 eggs
- 2  1/2 tablespoons cocoa ( unsweetened) ( She said she used Hershey´s)
- 140 gr. sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 60 or 70 ml. milk

Method:

Preheat the oven at 160 ºC  and prepare your tray with your cupcake liners.
In a bowl mix the milk with the vanilla.
In another bowl sieve the flour, cocoa and baking powde.
In the mixer, mix  the sugar with the butter untill creamy.
Add the eggs one by one.
Add half of the flour mixture, then all the milk-vanilla mixture, then the rest of the flour mixture

fill the liners 2/3 and bake for 22 , 24 min. ( this time is real!, mine took 24 min. to bake)
Take them out until you insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.

What I did was this: When I took them out and had them in the tray, I cut with my knife a line almost all the way through the cupcake and inserted a little piece of semi sweet chocolate for extra yummines!

They were perfect ( for my standars ) and delicious to everyone I gave them to : my husband, my mom, my two little helpers, and my friends

If you are having trouble making chocolate cupcakes or just want to try a new and easy breezy recipe, this is the one...

Here are my cupcakes done:

Not To Shabby ... What do you think?