Everyone – my life has been changed!!!  How you ask?  Well, quite simply put, it is through the purchase of this fantastic new cookbook:

I saw this book yesterday while I was in Chapters with my family.  Bakerella has been a favourite blogger of mine for sometime now, and I often peruse her site endlessly in my delusional dessert daydreams.  Bakerella is famous for these special little cake pops/bites.  She is so famous for these heavenly morsels that she even has a BOOK TOUR.  Cool, right?  Basically, these cake pops are cake crumbs mixed with icing and covered in a candy coating.  Not for the light of heart, hyper five-year-old or cavity fearer, but perfect for those suffering from low blood sugar!  Once I saw this book, I knew I had to have it.  I had resisted purchasing it once (as a partial Christmas gift for best friend Britt), but I could resist no longer.  Nope, I was 100 per cent committed to making seasonal cake pops.

And make them I did.  My favourite part of Bakerella’s cake pop recipe is that it calls for boxed cake mix and icing from the can.  Endless hours of baking from scratch were saved!

Also, the funniest thing happened to me when I was at the grocery store shopping for supplies.  Here I was in an unfamiliar baking aisle, frantically flipping through my glossy new cookbook to decide what to buy.  I must have been looking completely disoriented and confused when a woman came up to me and said something along the lines of “hey, I made cake pops last week!”  This introductory statement led to a 15 minute conversation about cake pops and how much we love Bakerella.  Turns out she had made reindeer, turkey and snowmen cake pops earlier in the year, a task which I have yet to conquer.  Want to hear something even more weird?  The woman, whose name is actually Karina, turned out to be a teacher at a high school in Ottawa where I had gone to write a journalism story last year.  SMALL WORLD, right?  Anyways, she gave me some great tips for making these (only use 3/4 of the frosting, melt shortening in with the chocolate to keep it from hardening), and it was a neat little conversation that sparked only out of me holding my new Cake Pops cookbook in the store.

After the grocery store I trekked off to the Bulk Barn where  I spent a small fortune on chocolate candy coating (those cool little coloured disks of moulding chocolate that don’t look like food), lollipop sticks and sprinkles.  My meagre student budget is going to start suffering thanks to the purchase of this book… Also, I partially over-purchased on the chocolate for this one, so I’m going to need to think of something creative to do with 2 pounds of coloured chocolate over the next week… I’m open to suggestions…

The thing with Bakerella’s cake pops recipes is that it’s kind of complicated to let the chocolate set on the cake.  Since I decided to make these kind of at the last minute, I didn’t have time to find the styrofoam block that Bakerella requires.  This is normally the thing that you stab all your lollipop sticks into so that your cake pops stand up straight.  With a little ingenuity and a lengthy trip to the Dollar Store, I created a cake pop standing device out of foam cups and masking tape.  Baking challenges, bring it on!

Since it is CHRISTMAS EVE (can you believe it?!) I spent my entire day…I mean HOURS, coating and hand decorating a dozen and a half little Christmas trees.  The end result was totally worth it – I mean, come on, you need to admit that they’re cute!   If you plan on making any of these, make sure you follow Bakerella’s recipe to the tee, since she has everything perfected.  On top of the Christmas trees, I made little tuxedo (as my mom calls them) cake bites, with half white chocolate and half semi-sweet chocolate.  A little less extravagant than the trees, but fun and tasty nonetheless.  Pour yourself a big glass of milk to go along with these and you’re all set!

To end off this post, I am happy to announce that we delivered some cake pops to our neighbours across the street, and in return they gave us a freshly baked apple pie!  What a trade off!

Merry Christmas!!
Love, Hilary