meeting bakerella

me and three other bloggers (bonnibella, spcookiequeen, and eatliverun)  from the bay area got the opportunity to meet bakerella at a cake pop contest at foodbuzz office today. bakerella (angie dudley) is in san francisco today for her book tour and foodbuzz hosted a cake pop contest. so i had to make a dozen of cake pops. i'll tell you all about my experience with cake pops. i have never made them before and reading and seeing it on so many blogs and videos, it seemed to be straight forward and easy to make these little cute things. but i should tell you that the reality is really different. especially if you try to think out of the box and change the ingredients a little bit to create your own cake pop it can get very tricky.

i explain the whole process of how to make cake pops in general and teh challenges i had with it. then i'll explain briefly how this amazing time with bakerella and foodbuzz team went. the basics of making cake pop is almost the same as cupcakes. you need the same sort of ingredients. the difference is only in how you implement it. you bake the cake first, then you crumble the cake. ( i prefer to use a fork to crumble them into very tiny pieces.) then you add frosting into the cake crumbles and make a dow with it, then make tiny balls , or other shapes you want out of the dow and leave these little creatures in the fridge and let them cool for a couple of hours.

melt the chocolate or other type of coating you have in a bowl inside a boiling water pot. i prefer this method to the microwave one because it melts the chocolate slower and is more consistent and you can keep it warm while you are dipping all your cakes in. then take the balls out of the fridge. insert a lollipop stick and dip them in the melted chocolate or other dip you prepared. then let them cool on a styrofoam or egg cartons.  

i made my cake a pumpkin cake to give it a seasonal taste and added saffron to white chocolate for my coating to only use natural made colors. the trick with saffron is that you need to dissolve it first in hot water and doing so and adding the hot water to the melting white chocolate totally changed the consistency of the chocolate which is not optimal for dipping. since the chocolate gets less thick it's more pain in removing the extras from the balls. i also used pieces of pistachoes to decorate my cake pops, because for me they are already very sweet and can't have yet another sweet layer on top of them. 

i also added some rose water and orange zest into the white chocolate to give a little more flavor that goes well with saffron. unfortunately bakerella didn't even taste our cake pops and she judged only by their looks and of course there were some amazing looking cake pops from some bloggers and foodbuzz team. it was fantastic seeing bakerella and asking for advice about cake pops. she also signed a copy of her book for us and it was such a great pleasure to meet her. she is such a sweet heart and an amazing person. it was great hearing her success story from her. hope you get to try making cake pops and for more tips and tricks check out her books and you'll see how many different variations of them you can make for every possible event. enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[visda]

@kankana : wow! you live in the bay area too. we should totally meet. I'm such a fan of your blog. Are you coming to the foodbuzz blogger festival?
@Alisa : yes. this is a fantastic project to entertain kids. I have made so much frosting in orange if you ever need some.;-)
@Julie at Burnt Carrots : I guess if she eats at every book signing event, she would gain way too much weight and I guess seeing so many cake pops all the time is not that tempting for her anymore.:-)
@Manu; yes. Saffron gives a great flavor but I would never put it in the coating ever again! I t makes things so complicated.
@Gina: was fantastic meeting you too. Till soon at the festival.
@chloe: Thanks for checking it out. It was a hard work after getting back home that night but it was worth it.;-)

[kankana]

Visda.. i had no idea you live in bay area! We should catch up! It must be so much fun right meeting up with blogger friends and making pops :) They looks fabulous.

[Alisa]

Oooh, cake pops!My son loves them and it's a great project to make with the kids :)

[Julie at Burnt Carrots]

It looks like you had a great time. Your cake pops sound amazing and its too bad she didn't taste them! I cannot imagine looking at all those treats and not eating them all!

[Manu]

What a fantastic experience! I love Bakerella's book! :-) I agree... making cake pops sounds easy, but I found it quite tricky... especially getting the coating to the right consistency. But they are great fun to make! :-) Well done, I would have totally tried yours... I am a big fan of saffron! :-)

[Gina]

Hi Visda,
It was such a pleasure meeting you today. This was so much fun and glad I had a chance to meet you and the others. I wish I had got a chance to taste yours, they sound wonderful. I'm looking forward to seeing you again soon. Hope you have a great weekend.
-Gina-

[chloe]

Cute pictures, especially the last one! I had no idea they were cake plus frosting on the inside!