I am a sucker for a pretty dessert, typically when they are pretty they also taste amazing and that is a bonus. Pleasing to the eye as well as the belly. Cake pop have been all the rage and I am just not that into cake. I do enjoy cake but not enough to bake it and then proceed to shred the hell out of it in my food processor. But, I do like things on sticks! I wanted to try my hand at making something pretty for an up coming baby shower. I did learn a few things that I will share.
Brace yourself, it is going to get sticky in here!
For this mission you will need:
Wax Paper
4 Cubes of Candy Coating Chocolate
4 inch Lollipop Sticks
Mini Treat Cups OR Baking Cups
2 Ounces Slivered Almonds
One bag of Large Marshmallows
Blender
Yields about 25 Pops
Run the almonds through either a food processor or a blender. Leaving a few larger pieces to give the pops a nice texture. I used my small personal blender with the flat blade, worked great!
I started with just 4 cubes of chocolate and was going to see where this crazy ride took me. Those 4 cubes made way more coating than I expected, it was nice surprise.
Melt the chocolate per the instructions on the container. I knew the chocolate was going to need to sit there for some time so I grabbed my fancy heating pad, threw a dish towel over it and set my bowl of melted chocolate on top. It worked! I left the pad on the medium setting and that seemed to be just enough to keep it from cooling off right away. I did end up throwing it back in the microwave once or twice to remelt but toward the very end of the process.
Dip the tip of the stick into the chocolate. This will help with securing the marshmallows on as well as coat the top making it easier later when trying to coat the whole marshmallow.
Insert the stick into the marshmallow.
Once the chocolate has set you can start to dip the whole marshmallow in the chocolate.
I had my wax paper set as well as my small bowl of crushed almonds. Once I dipped the chocolate I dipped the bottom of the marshmallow in the almonds and rolled it slightly in the almonds as to cover more of the bottom and sides.
Set them on your sheet of wax paper and let them cool.
I decided that since the bottom of the pops would look nice I didn't want to use tall baking cups so I found treat cups. They are just shorter but will keep them looking complete. They are new and don't come in pretty colors, just white.
I played around with some other items I had on hand. I had some cocoa pearls I bought at Trader Joes. I also used blue sprinkles. Tasty and pretty, score!
I had planned on topping them with something pretty but ran out of time and patience ( as did my daughter)
Here is an example of one of many things you could do. I just knotted some brown and pink ribbon.
This was fun and easy. I like they way they turned out and would certainly do them again.
enjoy!
