Dice Cake Pops

Woot!  An original recipe!  Sorry, I just have to celebrate my little victories. :) It makes me a happier person.

There's a party behind these cake pops.  Casino-themed, naturally.  So dice make perfect sense!  Cake-dice on sticks make just as much sense, practically, so there ya have it, my inspiration.

Btdubbs, I am extremely proud of these pops.  As of today, I have made about 150 of these babies.  Yeah, that's right.  I am a dice-cake-pop-making machine.

I used Bakerella's yellow cake and vanilla frosting recipes, both of which can be found in my recent post about cupcakes.

Dice Cake Pops

REQUIRES SOFTENED BUTTER, ROOM TEMP MILK, ROOM TEMP EGGS

REQUIRES CHILLING TIME

REQUIRES HARDENING TIME

1 cake

1 Bakerella-sized batch of frosting OR 3/4 can frosting

1-2 bags Target white chips (you can use Nestle if you want, but Target's chips work better for coating)

1 bag mini chocolate chips

50 lollipop sticks

Oil

Styrofoam block

1. Bake your cake.  (And make your frosting, if you're doing it totally home-made - WHICH I REALLY RECOMMEND!!!)
2. Crumble your cake into a large bowl.  Add frosting and combine with a wooden spoon.
3. Form cake and frosting mixture into cubes.  Place cubes on wax paper and store in an airtight container in a refrigerator overnight.
4. Melt white chocolate chips and oil in a metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water - don't let the surface of the water touch the bottom of the bowl.
5. Get out about 4 cake cubes at a time.  Dip lollipop sticks into chocolate, then stick into cake cubes.  Coat/dip each cake cube separately.
6. Immediately after dipping, decorate with mini chocolate chips in a dice pattern.  Then dip and decorate the rest of the cake cubes you took out of the fridge.
7. Stick pops into styrofoam block and let them harden completely before storing.
8. Repeat with remaining cake cubes.
9. Store pops in an airtight container at room temperature, in the refrigerator, or in the freezer.  Makes anywhere from 48-64 pops, depending on cube size.

Without further ado, I'll break it down for ya(with details to spare):

The ingredients for the yellow cake... 

Much thanks to Bakerella for her awesome book!  There are so many great tips in there that really helped with the dipping/cooling/storing processes.

So.  Bake your yellow cake.

See the brown edges?  The first time I made these pops (which goes undocumented for a reason), I crumbled that in with the rest of the cake.  Big mistake.  It turns the inside of the pops a suspicious brown-yellow color, that - while it screams "Homemade!" really loudly, in your face - isn't the most appetizing.  So this time, I cut off the brown, sticky edges with a plastic knife and the crumbled cake turned out beautifully:

Whip up that vanilla frosting...

And mix it into the crumbled cake with a wooden spoon.

But... what's this?

Crumbled chocolate cake?  And chocolate frosting?

Yes, I made chocolate cake pops as well!  I used Bakerella's basic recipes for chocolate cake and chocolate frosting:

Chocolate Cake

REQUIRES SOFTENED BUTTER, ROOM TEMP EGGS, ROOM TEMP MILK

2 1/2 cups flour (spooned and leveled)

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter, softened

2 cups sugar

3 eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups milk, room temperature

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour a 9x13-inch cake pan.
2. In a large bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.
3. In another large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing until just combined and scraping down the sights of the bowl after each addition.  Add vanilla and mix well.
4. Add flour mixture a third at a time, alternating with milk in two additions: flour, milk, flour, milk, flour.
5. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.  Bake 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Let cake cool completely (overnight works best) before crumbling.

Chocolate Frosting

REQUIRES SOFTENED BUTTER

1 1/2 sticks butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups powdered sugar

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1-2 teaspoons milk, if needed (probably will be)

1. Cream butter and vanilla until combined.
2. Add powdered sugar, one cup at a time, mixing well after each addition.
3. Add cocoa and mix until just combined.
4. Add milk if needed to make the frosting creamier.

Now, where were we?

Form your cake-and-frosting mush into cubes...

Here's how you do that in a neat, quick manner: Form the mush into balls...

Then squish on three sides with the bottom of a plate...

...and there you have it!  A perfect-ish cake cube!

Let them chill in the fridge, on wax paper and stored in an airtight container, overnight.  In the meantime, you can begin on the decorations.  They won't last you all night, but they take a good amount of time.  Unfortunately, you can't just stick mini chocolate chips in your coated pops and call it a day.  But what you can do is this...

I'm talking about flicking the tip off the top of each mini chip.  And, of course, eating the leftovers.  Once you get the hang of it, neither task takes too much time.

Nom.  So once your chips are de-tipped and your cubes are hard enough, melt some oil in a metal bowl above a saucepan of water...

NOT that much oil.  That's enough for more than one bag of white chips.  Add a little oil, and a few chips...

...and then add more chips.

You want a consistency like this:

Then TURN THAT BURNER OFF!  The white chocolate doesn't cool for a while, so you'll have plenty of working time.  Actually, I didn't have to remelt the chips at all - I only turned on the burner to add in more chips and oil!
Again, use Target's chips.  They work the best.  I don't know what it is about them, or how fake they are compared to Nestle (whoops, did I say that?), but they are amazing.
Anyways, dip a lollipop stick in the chocolate and stick it into one of your cake cubes.  Then coat the cake cube with chocolate.  I do this by glopping a bunch of white chocolate onto the cube with that mini spatula you've been seeing...

...and smoothing off the sides with a toothpick.

As soon as you finish coating a pop, stick your prepared chocolate chips into the sides - otherwise the chocolate will harden and you won't be able to decorate the pop.  Be sure to alternate how many chips are on the top of the pop.  And, if you don't have a die handy to help you, each set of opposite sides adds up to 7.
A quick tip: if your chocolate does start to harden too quickly, you probably have too much oil.  Add more white chips and, if necessary, turn on the burner again until the new chips are melted.  Your chocolate may continue to harden too quickly for another pop, but then it'll slow down and you'll be able to decorate again.
It also helps to stick a pop in a styrofoam block when decorating so that you don't have to hold it.  Just turn the pop when you need to reach the other sides.  Then, leave the pop in the styrofoam to harden.

Once completely hard, the pops can be stored at room temperature a few days, refrigerated for a few more days, or frozen for at least a week.  Just pop them (get it?) into an airtight container and choose your temperature.  They take about two hours to thaw when stored in the freezer, and the cake inside is still slightly cold - although if you ask me, the pops are better when sort of chilly!

Of course, they're delicious at any temperature.  Or with any flavor.

And they will soon disappear.

Like all your money at a casino.

-JJ