Coffee Cake Pops

Sorry for the long break!  Finals week=no blogging time.

But now that that's all over, it's back to... cake pops!

I made these for my grandma's birthday, because she's addicted to coffee.  I guess I'm not really helping that, am I? :3

So.  I made basic yellow cake in a 9x13 pan, crumbled it, and combined it with some homemade coffee frosting.

About that frosting...

I based my frosting off of this recipe, but I found that it wasn't coffee enough.  Especially when combined with yellow cake.  (Note to self: Next time, bake a coffee-flavored cake and make coffee frosting!)

So I decided to improvise.

(Play ominous music here.)

And, it kind of worked!  Except that I ended up using pretty much all of the powdered sugar and instant coffee.  Oops.

Eventually I got it to a nice, not-too-sweet, very-coffee-flavored frosting.  (Cream cheese, baby.  It really works.)

But when I combined it with the cake, the coffee flavor kind of got lost.  And ran away.  :(

However...


I ground up some instant coffee flakes/things/whateverIdon'tdrinkcoffeesoIwouldn'tknow (Yes, it's true, I don't drink coffee.  I like it, I just don't drink it, that's all don't hate meeee! DX) with a mortar and pestle and stirred it into the cake-and-frosting mixture.  That really got the coffee flavor going strong.

Then I formed it into balls...

And refrigerated them for a day.  For the first time, I didn't coat my cake pops in white chocolate! :O I melted semisweet chocolate chips instead, glopped it on there (which makes for a very thick coating that is prone to melting if you leave it out too long), and stuck a chocolate-covered espresso bean on the top of each one.

Insta-adorable! :)

My advice to you: Let these pops cool for about a half-hour, then stick them in the fridge.  Since it was like 90 degrees when I made these, no wonder they never fully dried/cooled - but real chocolate works differently than white chocolate, so put them in the fridge just in case.

These freeze just as well as any other pops - this I know because I froze them until the day of my grandma's birthday.

My notes:
These were pretty good, except the coating's too thick.  And I don't like coffee-flavored cake.  But that's just me.

If you're trying to make these, the best of luck to ya!
-JJ

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures... I was kind of freaking out about the frosting dilemma...

P.P.S. So you know how I had to experiment with the frosting?  I had lots leftover.  TONS.  And it's all featured in my next post!