Cupcake Pops!

On Saturday morning, I grabbed all my ingredients, my apron, and my slippers, and I drove 20 minutes on gravel roads to The Ranch (also known as my husband's childhood home). My dear mother-in-law had a chocolate cake waiting for me...baked, cooled, and crumbled in a food processor.

While she assembled all the other ingredients (melting chocolate, m&ms, sprinkles, lollipop sticks, and a cookie cutter) I mixed 3/4 of a tub of chocolate frosting with the crumbled cake crumbs.

Notice the lovely apron? Mamapua made it...and I won it in a drawing on her blog!! It came in handy for this messy venture...

See, Emily, reading blogs every day can pay off!!

When the frosting/cake was a consistent texture, we began making cake balls. We made about 50 of them and put them in the freezer.

After about 15 minutes to chill, we pulled them out of the freezer and I began to form them into cupcakes. This was a slow and painstaking process. We discovered that next time, we would make the cake balls a little bigger. The bigger ones make cuter cupcake shapes.

Then it was off to the freezer again! (Next time we're going to try using candy molds for the bottom of the cupcake. It took a loooong time to make all these! Or we will invest in more than one cookie cutter!).

When they were chilled and firm, we began the dipping process! Each cupcake bottom is dipped in chocolate...

Placed upside down on a cookie sheet...and then stuck with a lollipop stick!

We did this another 48 times...it was faster with two of us! I would dunk it and Beanball would take care of the lollipop stick. Then we waited again for the chocolate to cool and harden.

Finally it was time for the fun part...the pink topping and sprinkles! First we melted the white chocolate with two or three discs of red melting candy.

Then we started our assembly line again. I would dunk the top of the cupcake in the pink chocolate, and Beanball would place an m&m on top and sprinkle the sprinkles! Then we stuck the finished products in Styrofoam disks so they could harden.

I'd say the finished product was worth the effort...

What do you think? We wrapped each individual pop in a cellophane bag and tied it with a cute ribbon.

Of course...no matter how cute they are, we need to know if they taste good!

I was nervous...but it was well worth the effort! Oh, it was a delicious and flavorful treat! I can't wait to try it again!