Red Velvet Cake Pops

This recipe is so easy and so tasty that I had to post it as fast as I could blog about it! My great friend, Kathy, came over for a cooking visit and we had a great time making these cute little bites of deliciousness.

This was Kathy and my second attempt at making cake pops. You may have heard of them....yummy bites of cake and frosting covered in chocolate and on a lollipop? AMAZING! Please, PLEASE go visit Bakerella (www.bakerella.com) to see some truly amazing treats!

The only problems is we've never actually made them on the sticks...so they become more like bonbons, and that's ok!

You can make them using a homemade mix or a box mix (like we did). I am excited to try these using homemade recipes, but for the purpose of this post, I'll give you the quick low-down and you can experiment all you want!

Kathy's husband even renamed these treats "Devil Pops" because they're so good...consider yourself warned.

Red Velvet Cake Pops (or balls or bonbons, whatever!)

1 box of red velvet cake mix (or whatever flavor cake you'd like)
1 container of cream cheese cake frosting
1 package of chocolate candy melts
1 package of white chocolate candy melts
Sprinkles for decorating

Make the cake mix according to the box directions for a 13X9 cake pan. Allow the cake to cool completely. Over a large bowl, break the cake up into fine crumbs (Bakerella's tip is to rub pieces of cake together and it works like a charm!). To the crumbled cake, use about 3/4 (adding a little bit at at time) of the frosting and mix well. (You will NOT be using the rest of the frosting...feel free to use it for something else or discard it). The mixture should be moist enough to form into balls but not so moist that it is squishy.

*Be sure not to use too much frosting...if the cake is too moist, it will not set and it will be too squishy to coat with the candy melts. I also suspect this was our problem with getting them to stay on the sticks...I think we had the cake a bit too moist - so use a light hand with the frosting!!
Roll the mixture into balls and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Freeze the balls 15 - 20 minutes until very firm but not frozen through.

While the cake balls are setting up in the freezer, melt the candy melts in batches in microwave safe bowls. We used both white and dark chocolate candy melts for our cake balls. In a microwave safe bowl, melt at 50% power in 30 second increments.

Once the cake balls are set, plop one ball into the candy coating of your choice. With a spoon, make sure the ball is completely coated. Using the spoon, scoop out the cake ball and tap lightly to let any excess drip back into the bowl and get a nice, smooth finish on your cake ball.

Allow the cake ball to slide off the spoon back onto the parchment paper. Decorate immediately with the sprinkles of your choice (candy melts harden really quickly, so make sure if you're using sprinkles, to do it now!). Repeat with the remaining cake balls.

Try to resist, I dare you!