Dark Chocolate Cake Pops

Oh those luscious mounds of chocolaty goodness, that crunchy bittersweet dark chocolate coating giving way to a mouthful of moist, sweet chocolate cake bound together with a delicious vanilla buttercream! Who could say no to that? (If you can, you’re really missing out!)

My love for cake is enormous; my favorite hobby is to look up recipes on the internet for a variety of flavors of cake, only to end up in the kitchen, electric mixer in my hand, whisking away. To say I enjoy baking is an understatement. However, eating a whole slice of cake has given me that nagging feeling of guilt way too many times; I cannot afford to eat much cake as I would like to bake. So I started reducing my portions – from a whole cake I shifted to baking cupcakes, and from cupcakes to cake pops!

Cake pops are a wonderful innovation in the world of all things sweet. They are tiny and bite sized and they are just as amazing as that delicious slice of cake you wish to scarf down; they don’t make you feel as guilty and they certainly don’t make you scrutinize yourself in front of the mirror for a good five minutes. Cake pops are essentially tiny spheres of cake, bound together with a dollop of frosting, coated with your favorite chocolate and hoisted onto a lollipop stick. But even though I have a bunch of pop sticks lying on my shelf, my cake pops never make their way on to them. (I mean they are ready to EAT, who cares about the stick?!)

Here’s what you need

One chocolate cake, baked, cooled and crumbled by hand. You can use your favorite chocolate cake recipe.
Vanilla buttercream – 4 to 5 tbsp (You could also use a store bought vanilla frosting)
Semi-sweet or dark chocolate – 150 g, chopped
Any kind of sprinkles, or chopped nuts for decoration

Here’s how you make these luscious dark chocolate cake pops

Once your cake is cooled, crumble it with your hands.
Add in the vanilla buttercream to the crumbled cake and mould it until it comes together like a dough. Make sure you do not add in too much frosting so as to retain the crumble and cake-y-ness of the cake.
Once the dough is ready, with the palms of your hand, sculpt small portions of the dough into bite sized spheres. Put these cake balls on a baking sheet lined with butter paper and pop them into the fridge for 15 to 20 minutes.
In the mean time, melt the semi-sweet or dark chocolate in the microwave oven for 3 minutes on Medium Low heat or until the chocolate is smooth and creamy and no longer lumpy.
Use a fork and spoon to drop each cake ball into the melted chocolate and turn over until completely coated. Once coated, line the cake pops on the butter paper, top with your favorite colored sprinkles or nuts and put back in the fridge for about an hour and a half to set.

If you’re a fan of chocolate and you just can’t get enough, you have got to try these cake pops; they are perfectly balanced with a crackling bitter-sweet coating and a sweet melt-in-the-mouth center which is to-die-for. It’s like a two-in-one offer, you have the crunchy sweetness of a chocolate bar and the goodness of cake packed in each cake pop. My circle of loved ones love these, as do I. I’m certain you’ll love them too.