By now, everyone has seen that deliciously easy-looking Buzzfeed Food video, “Cake Pops Four Ways,” somewhere on their facebook timeline. I, like you, used to watch it in awe, totally caught up, perhaps with a little drool coming out the corner of my mouth. But now, when I even see the video still before it starts, I have a repulsive, visceral reaction. Why do I respond like this to a fun video of some delicious looking treats? Because I tried to make them. And what’s my recommendation to you if you were planning on making those cake pops for someone special this Valentine’s Day?
Take a moment, breath, and ask yourself: Is my bae really worth it?
If the answer is still, unwaveringly, yes, than by all means go for it. Just remember your commitment throughout, and you may get through the process without stress eating all the extra frosting or smushing the oreos to a fine powder in anger. If the answer is anywhere close to eh, just give it up and go buy him a canoli. I still remember with a shudder that night, at midnight, covered in smears of melted chocolate, topless, sweating, wild eyed, and only halfway done with the monsters that had once looked so maliciously easy. That is not a state to be in if you have anything less than a solid commitment to pastries and the spirit of love.
The process started out fairly easy. I walked to the Star Market in Porter Square to get the ingredients. They’re infinitely cheaper there than at Tommy’s or CVS, and the walk wasn’t the worst thing — I even convinced myself I was happy to walk, because it was excercise (#fit).
When I got there, things continued to go well. I first headed to the cake aisle to check out the prices. Luckily, Duncan Hines cake mix and frosting were buy one get one free, in every flavor (!!!), so I got the core ingredients cheap. Was I making all four types of cake pops? No. But I was making two, and I went for chocolate cake and funfetti cake, and chocolate and vanilla frosting. The oreo and the birthday cake pops it would be. I also bought a six pack of eggs (each box of cake required three), a box of oreos (regular, not double stuff — a move I would soon come to regret), and a yogurt (for my roommate who had begrudgingly accompanied me on this adventure, and then decided she wanted a yogurt).
The one little hold up was that Star Market didn’t sell cake pop sticks or melting chocolates (come on, Star Market). But Porter Square also has a Michael’s, so I walked over there and got 100 sticks (SO MANY) for $4.99, and some bags of melting chocolate (I went for a splurge here for the nicer ones; I still fucked up the chocolate in the end, so it probably wasn’t worth it).
For the other ingredients, I did a little Dhall-recon. Canola oil was smuggled out in two separate to-go cups. Sprinkles and cocoa krispies came the same way. With ingredients assembled, I was on my way. Oh, and in a weird moment of hubris, I decided to stick exclusively to the buzzfeed video for instructions about how to make the cake pops, in lieu of a recipe. PROTIP: Don’t do this.
Anyways, next up was making them. I live in Adams, so I got the key and went down to use the ratchet Adams kitchen with its lovable (read: questionable) smell. I bribed a handful of friends to come bake with me, promising them cake pops and eternal love when we finished. PRO TIP: Do not attempt this without friends. You need like eight hands to make these fuckers, so if you try them alone there’s a 90% chance you’ll be found dead the next day with your face in a bowl of chocolate.
The first step, making the cakes, was easy. I mixed the boxed mixes according to instructions and put them in the oven while my friends set about de-creaming the oreos, and pouring the rest of the ingredients in bowls so we could take this pretty picture.
It was here that the first thing went wrong: in the video, the mysterious cake-popper uses the melted oreo creams to dip her chocolate-oreo cake pops. However, one pack of oreos yields a pitiful amount of cream (cookie crumble to cream ratio looked about eleven to one). My advice for trying to do this? Make sure you buy two packs of oreos, or at least get one pack of double-stuffed.
But this mistake wasn’t such a bad one. After we let the cakes cool (for about ten minutes) and took them out of their pans, we mushed them, which was very fun. Then, looking sadly at the white oreo cream stuck up on the side of a bowl, we decided to just melt that and mix it directly in with the chocolate cake. More oreo flavor, right? [This, in the end, was a really good idea. Although I’m mad at these cake pops and hate them for the energy it took to make them, people said the oreo ones were especially delicious, and I’m convinced it was adding the cream].
After we mushed the cakes, I eye-balled it and decided to throw about half a thing of frosting in each (YOLO). The cake-mushes got all moist and spongy at this point, so that it was disgusting but weirdly pleasing to touch them. If you get that feeling, you’ve done it right so far. After, we balled them up (I think a little bigger than we should have, because these ended up as phat cake pops) and put them on wax paper (there just happened to be some in the kitchen) in the freezer, balanced atop someone’s forgotten burger meat and buffalo chicken. Yum.
After about forty minutes of freezing (we were doing homework and kind of forgot about them . . . oops) the hard part began — dipping in chocolate. Because we didn’t have the necessary fancy double-broiler needed to melt chocolate on a stove, we used the microwave. And for a while, this worked well. But then the white chocolate was too thick, and it started to feel like we were dipping the cake pops in frosting . . . or cement. The chocolate refused to coat them smoothly, and the warm kitchen was turning our long frozen cake pops to mush. Cake pops began to disintegrate in the chocolate. The chocolate was cooperating less and less. I was told my method for covering the pops in oreos after they came out of the chocolate was poor. Everything, it seemed, was going to shit.
So, annoyed, we threw the chocolate back in the microwave for twenty seconds. NOPE, that was too long. It curdled into this gross, paste-like, fugly mess that smelt like feet. Here’s a picture of it flung angrily into the trash.
At this point, we were all covered in chocolate, I had taken my shirt off to wipe things down, and everyone was sweating from the oven-stress-heater heat in the room. We put the dipped and undipped cake pops back in the freezer, opened a window, washed some bowls, and took about ten minutes to breathe.
Then, things started up again, but better. Instead of melting all the chocolate at once, we repeatedly melted a little bit at a time, enough to keep it liquid and roll three or four pops. We established a line with who was melting, dipping, rolling, and sticking stuff in the freezer. We only pulled a couple cake pops out of the freezer at a time, to keep things from getting too soft to dip. Eventually, eventually, the cake pops were all dunked, dipped, and tucked away in the freezer for the night (I was really trusting that no one in Adams would come by and eat them). By this time it was past one AM because the process took forever. Exhausted, and vaguely coated in sugar, I cleaned up the kitchen and rolled into bed.
The next evening, I went back for my cake pops. In the soft glow of the freezer light, they sort of looked beautiful. I brought them to a Her Campus hangout for the staff to eat. On the walk over, I was suddenly moved to hug the bag of cake pops close, wanting them to feel safe, warm — a part of me. I laid them out gently on a tray. I said a silent whisper of goodbye whenever someone reached for one of their sticks, and a prayer of thanks when I heard the eater’s “mmm”/”ooooohhhh”/”mmmmyaaaa”/ “holy moly these are gooooood”. The cake pops were well recieved, even loved. But with them, a part of me was taken, either to die as they were digested or to live on in the memory of a cake pop once enjoyed. Either way, the cake pops took something from me that day. So PROTIP: if you’re planning on making these for bae tomorrow, just ask yourself, and make sure, that your bae is truly worth it.