Browsing the archives for the candy melts tag.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Domestic, Marriage, Small Town

Last weekend, four of my dearest friends made the two hour journey (one of them had a 5 hour journey) to my house in the woods to help me celebrate my birthday.

Backing up a bit, when I was preparing for my ladies (and Andrew) to come up for the weekend, I naturally went on a baking spree, and so I needed birthday items, like sprinkles and candy melts. I literally asked for a handful of 3 colours of candy melts, 3 colours of sprinkles and about 1/2 lb of milk chocolate. My husband drove into town to get the gear I needed and came back with what can only be described as an avalanche of sprinkles and candy melts and other amazing things I didn’t even ask for. That’s love people, that’s love.

 

I had asked for the candy melts and sprinkles to make cupcake pops. I’ve made cake balls many, many times before but these are so much more festive! I used the Bakerella Cupcake Bites Made Easy post as my guide. They really are so easy, all you need is some chocolate, a candy cup mold (like the bottom of a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup), candy melts in different colours, some sprinkles in different colours and Smarties. Ready?

First, of course, make your cake. I used the Stir and Bake Chocolate Cake I posted a couple of weeks ago. While the cake is baking, make your chocolate cups. Just melt the chocolate over a double boiler (a lot of people use the microwave with great success), and pour it into the mold. Be sure to coat the sides well!

Once the cake has baked and cooled, cut off any crispy edges so you’re just left with the soft cakey part and then smush it up!

Leave the chocolate to dry on the counter for a bit, and once it’s lost it’s shiny gloss, pop it in the fridge for a few hours.

Now add a few dollops of buttercream or cream cheese icing and mix it up. The ratio is different depending on what recipes you use for the cake and for the icing. We’ve been over the whole store bought things before. I know it’s so much easier to use a boxed cake mix and a tub of frosting but my Granny has drilled in to me that I should just do it from scratch. I swear it doesn’t take that much longer at all!

 

Once you’ve got the right consistency, roll your mixture into cake balls and put those in the fridge as well. Make sure you roll them big enough (or small enough depending on your mold) to sit comfortably in your chocolate cups!

When your chocolate cups are ready, and you’ve popped them out of their molds, melt some of your candy melts down to use as glue to hold the cake balls in the chocolate cups.

Bakerella squished the cake balls right into the melted chocolate in the mold before it even went in the fridge. Which is genius. I, however, did not do that so I had to glue them in. Next time, I will do that.

Now holding the cupcake pop by the chocolate cup, dip it in the candy melts and add your sprinkles and Smartie to it while it’s still wet! These are a lot of fun to make because you can literally use whatever sort of toppings you want depending on the occasion!

 

The purple ones are a replica of the ones in Bakerella’s tutorial, the blue ones just also felt really festive. The pink ones were a little birthday treat to me because my favourite colour combo is black and pink (obviously). These are hands down the best birthday treat I’ve made.

I made extras and let the kids decorate a bunch on their own. They were really creative with it and made a wonderful mess in the kitchen!

Keeping with the theme of treats I love that look a lot harder to make than they really are, I also made Leek Rings. They really should be eaten fresh, so I made them as I knew everyone was coming over. I went with leeks instead of onions because we all prefer them, and they’re just a little different than what you’d expect. So people were arriving as I was making these, and no lie, they were eating them right out of the collinder! Very few of the leek rings even made it to a plate.

 

Very simple to make!! You can cut your leeks (or onions) thin and have a lot or cut them thicker to make a bigger snack out of them. If you cut them as thin as I did, you can just pop them in your mouth in one or two bites. Which may not be a good thing!

Leek Rings
1 cup cornstarch
1 cup flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup cold water
2 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons steak seasoning (!!)

Heat up a wok (or frying pan or whatever) 1/2 full of canola oil, use a fork to dip the

leek/onion in the batter, shake it off a bit and pluink it in the oil. Let it cook for just a few seconds if you want it a golden brown, then flip it, cook it for another few seconds and move it to a paper towel-lined collinder. If you like them crispier, just leave them in longer – but not too long, these babies cook fast!

I could eat and eat and eat these. They were so good it’s a little alarming. I would gain so much weight if I made these all the time, but boy do I ever want to make these all the time! I will save them as treats for when I have visitors (which isn’t that often out here in the woods)!

One more treat and I’ll let you get on with your day. This was my birthday cake. I was having some serious oven issues and my sister looooves cheesecake, so I whipped up this Chocolate Elegance Cake from Kraft. Amazing, and again, so simple!!

 

Chocolate Elegance Cake – from Kraft

1 1/2 packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups Cool Whip
6 ounces chocolate chips
1 package jello chocolate instant pudding (4 servings)
1/2 cup milk

This cake is made upside down in a loaf pan, set in the fridge, covered in chocolate and set in the fridge again. Then your friends come over and eat it all!

Beat the cream cheese and the sugar till blended, then stir in 1 1/2 cups of the Cool Whip. Spread 2 cups of this mixture onto the bottom of a 8 x 4 loaf pan lined with plastic wrap.

Melt 3 ounces of the chocolate chips, and add to the rest of the cream cheese mixture along with the pudding mix and milk. Beat till blended and spread over the first layer in the pan. Pop this in the fridge for about 4 hours.

Once the cake as set, melt the rest of the chocolate (3 ounces) and Cool Whip (1 cup) together, let it cool a bit. Now invert your cake onto the platter you’re using and take off the plastic wrap. Spread the glaze you just made over the cake and immediately top with either sprinkles or nuts or whatever you like. Put it back in the fridge for another half hour or so, till the glaze is set.

This cake was amazing, and I later thought about tinting the first layer to a bright colour, or making several layers like that one and tinting them all different colours!

I made one more treat for my birthday party, but I can’t tell you about it yet because it’s a Daring Baker’s challenge and we’re not unleashing it until tomorrow. Trust me though, it’s good! Once you read how to do it, you’ll be wondering why you don’t make it yourself all the time!!

3 Comments

Last Day of School Treats!

Domestic, Kids

Yes, this happened two weeks ago, but it was a great day and the treats were really fun to make and turned out exactly as I had hoped. There are other fun creative domestic adventures that have happened even before the last day of school, but I really wanted to share these photos first.

I plunked down with the wee ones and the laptop and they picked what they wanted to bring to their last day of school parties. Wee one #1 picked Barerella’s Oreo Truffles and Wee One #2 picked Bakerella’s Candy Apple Pops. I love that they both picked from the same site, even with all their other options!

Oreo Truffles – from Bakerella.com

1 package Oreo cookies (divided, but use the creamy filling too)
1 8oz. package softened cream cheese
white chocolate (or whatever you like)
Oreo crumbs (optional)

1. Crush about 7 cookies and keep them for topping the truffles, or use a box of Oreo crumbs.

2. Crush the rest of the cookies and mash the cookies and cream cheese together. Bakerella suggested using the back of a spoon for the mashing, and it was a great help – so use the back of a spoon!

Oreo Truffles in progress Oreo Truffles in progress

3. Roll the mix into 1″ balls and line up on wax paper covered cookie sheets.

4. Pop them in the fridge as you melt the chocolate to make it a little easier on yourself. Coat in chocolate, sprinkle some of the crushed cookies crumbs on top and transfer back to wax paper. Sprinkle with the cookie crumbs and let them dry. Pop them back in the fridge for a few to set up – don’t eat them yet!!

Oreo Truffles

The recipe used white chocolate, and the look that gives is way more visually appealing than milk chocolate. It just looks more Oreoy, you know? However, wee one #1 and his friends are not fond of white chocolate, and they were the ones eating them, so milk chocolate it was.

Once the chocolate has set up and hardened in the fridge, they are amazing. They’re amazing even before they go in the fridge, but if you wait till they’ve been in the fridge for a few hours, they have a perfect little crackle when you bite into the hardened chocolate. Mmmm.

Apparently, these went very fast at his school party and all of his friends asked him to bring them to school parties next year! A few of them even asked

Candy Apple Pops – from Bakerella.com

1 batch of cake pops
Red candy melts
Pretzel sticks
Green candies (I used green apple licorice)

My husband does all of the grocery shopping and errand running around here – which I am eternally grateful for – and this list was no exception. He knows that school treats are a big deal around here and rightly assumed that meant that last day of school treats would be a very big deal. He must have called me 10 times during that shopping trip with thoughtful questions!

Regular pretzels or pretzel sticks?
Is a pound of candy melts enough?
What kind of green candy? I’ll get green apple flavour for the apples!
Do you need packaging for them?
Can I eat one?

green apple licorice melted red candy melts

So first, make your cake pops. Either while the cake is baking or cooling, gather your leaves and stems. I cut up the green licorice leaves and I broke up the pretzel sticks. Set up a little assembly line to make putting them together go faster and smoother.

Once they’ve chilled and are ready to be coated in chocolate, melt down the red candy melts. I prefer the double boiler method, but you can just as easily use the microwave if you’d rather that or don’t have a double boiler. I always dip my cake pop stick in the melted chocolate/candy first so it sticks to the inside of the pop better. Then I use a soup spoon to coat it evenly and set it on it’s head to dry. In retrospect, I should have let them dry standing, in the contraption I fashioned to assemble them (I poked holes in a small cake board and balanced it over two tall glasses).

Candy Apple Pops

Poke the pretzel stem into the top of the apple pop, if you’ve let them dry first just dip the bottom of the pretzel in a little melted candy and poke it in. Same goes for the green candy leaves. They go from being a red cake pop to an apple cake pop in no time!

These were a serious hit at school, all of the kids loved them and almost all of the parents who saw them commented on them. They were very, very fun to make. My husband came into the kitchen and helped out with assembling them all and it was hilarious. He is very detail oriented and wanted to place each leaf just so.

Chocolate Covered Pretzel Sticks

After school, we had a little ‘Yay Summer’ picnic on the porch and this is one of the wee treats I made for them. We had so many pretzel sticks left over, and I always have about a ton of chocolate in the pantry, so I made some chocolate covered pretzel sticks. I also saved some Oreo Truffles and Candy Apple Pops for them to share with the kids on our street. I’ve got big plans for a Yay Summer party next year now!

2 Comments