Cake Pop (Fail)

Norah and I are both mildly obsessed with those Cake Pops from S'bucks. You know, two delicious bites of cake covered in even more delicious candy coating on a lollipop stick. We've gotten them a couple of times when we are out and about and she has turned into a cake pop begging monster. I finally had to cut her off before she got to the point where she believed every trip to Target warranted a $2 treat.

I have been going out of my way to do special mom/Norah projects since Lou has been here, so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone by spending an afternoon making our own cake pops. I found an easy recipe online and we walked to the grocery store up the street to get our supplies:

• A box of cake mix (usually I am anti-box cake mix, but life these days demands it), and the ingredients that go with it (eggs, oil, water)
  
• A can of prepared frosting (see above)
• Wax paper (we already had it)
• Candy melts (no dice, so I got a bag of white chocolate chips)
  
• Lollipop sticks (no dice, so we lifted a bunch of coffee stirrer sticks from the S'bucks next to the grocery store)

Things started off smoothly and the mix got mixed (Norah is a pro with the hand mixer) and put into the oven.

While it baked we cut up the coffee stirrers to make them the length of lollipop sticks. I had my suspicions as to whether or not they would hold up, but there was no way we were getting in the car and driving to a craft store for actual lollipop sticks. In retrospect, we should have gotten kabob sticks, but whatever.

Vanilla cake out of the oven.

Said cake crumbled in a bowl. I did this part. I mean, I wanted to actually eat them.

Can of frosting (rainbow chip) folded into the cake.

Rolled into balls, and stick added. Our two mistakes here were, well, the sticks. But also, we made the balls waaaaaay too big. There was no way that poor little stick was going to cut it.

Next we melted the white chocolate chips. How do I not have a double boiler? I say that every single damn time I need a double boiler.

Melted chips are still pretty thick.

We attempted to coat the ball in the melted chocolate, but the ball was too big and the chocolate was too thick. Apparently, melted chips are not a good substitute for actual candy coating. We improvised by globbing some on around the stick.

Let's just say they weren't very good. I think Norah's exact words were, 'these are yucky.' I thought the whole project was a wash, but I put them in the fridge anyway because BVZ will eat anything. After chilling over night there were definitely much better. Not great, but edible.

Louis was not impressed with any of it. See how red his eye is? I made the mistake of calling the advice nurse to see if I should be concerned about it. He had a runny nose and infrequent cough (cooties from Norah, I am sure) and a mild viral rash on his chest, so I figured for peace of mind I would get the all clear.

You would think I would have learned my lesson by now. They ALWAYS say to come in and then you feel like a delinquent parent if you don't follow their advice. So, I left BVZ with all of the cake pop clean up hauled poor Lou into urgent care at 7:00 pm for them to give him the once over, say 'yup, it looks viral' and 'watch him like a hawk to make sure it doesn't turn into RSV.'

He's fine. Much better than the cake pops.