The Night Before

As you have read from my previous post, my bridesmaids and I stayed up all night baking and preparing for my first bridal shower of the weekend.
I have made cakepops several times and I feel they get uglier with each attempt. Oh well, at least they taste good right?

The first item on our list to bake was the cake to make cakepops, next was red velvet cupcakes. Allison and Stacey are my baking companions back home. Clarissa, however, is more of the "taste-tester". Don't worry, we put her to work. While Allison and Stacey started on the cupcakes, Clarissa and I were working on preparing the cake balls. We had already cooked the cake and let it cool. Now it was time to do the heavy lifting.

Cakepops are fairly easy to make but very time consuming. You bake the cake, then let it cool, then you ruin it. Literally. Don't worry about your cake looking pretty coming out of the stove.
Once the cake cools, you smush it. That's right-- dig your hands in it and crumble it up like you did on your 2nd birthday. As you're crumbling it, add whatever icing you choose until the cake feels moist. We used German Chocolate Cake mix (Duncan Hines is THE best with the exception of cakes made from scratch). We also bought cream cheese icing, also Duncan Hines. Forget Betty Crocker, she's mediocre. Once we mushed and smushed the icing into the cake, it was time to roll them into little balls. I'm telling you, what better way to release your inner child than smashing a cake and playing with it?

Once the cake was rolled into balls, you stick the cake pop stick into the cake balls. Set them in the fridge for about an hour to let them harden a bit, this will make it easier later on.
About 5 minutes before taking the cake pops out of the fridge, start melting chocolate (preferably the candy melts that harden). Once you dip all the cake pops in the melted chocolate, set them to the side and attempt to decorate them. You should get something similar to this (unless you're Houdini).

Yes I know, they look ugly. But they were so amazing. Talk about melting in your mouth!

Once we got done with the red velvet cupcakes and the hassle we call cakepops, we made Clarissa her "Brookies", which is a combination of brownies and cookies in a pan. She basically stayed up all night helping us bake in hopes that we would make her brookies in return.