Making and Decorating Cake Pops for Kids

Kiddies just love cake pops and this simple recipe is bound to delight as the centrepiece of any child’s party.

Chocolate Orange Cake Pops

These delicious little cake morsels have a citrus flavour that isn’t too cloying.

Cake Ingredients

• 200g (7oz) self-raising flour sifted with 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 150g (5oz) caster sugar
• 100g (4oz) unsalted butter or cake margarine
• 2 large eggs
• Zest of 1 orange and 2 teaspoons of the juice
• 150g (5oz) natural yoghurt

Method

Preheat oven to 180ºC and lightly grease or oil a 25cm baking pan.

Beat butter and sugar together before adding eggs, one at a time, with a spoonful of flour if necessary to stop the mixture curdling. Then add the zest and juice before continuing to fold in the flour and the yoghurt in alternate spoonfuls.

Bake for around 35 minutes. Leave to cool totally.

Once the cake is completely cold, turn it to crumb using either a food processor or a coarse sieve through which you push it with a wooden spoon.

Binding Ingredients

• 100g (4oz) unsalted butter
• 100g (4oz) mascarpone cheese
• 250g (9oz) icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon orange juice

Method

Beat the butter and cheese and orange juice together until well combined, but if using a food processor, do not have the speed to high as this can cause the cheese to begin to granulate. When the wet ingredients are well combined, add the icing sugar in about four batches, stirring each one in thoroughly until smooth and thick.

Mix the cake crumbs into the binding, using a spatula to ensure that the ingredients are fully mixed.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Remove from fridge. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper or use a marble slab that fits in the fridge. Dampen your hands slightly and roll the mixture into balls the size of a walnut. Put the balls on the tray or slab and refrigerate again for 30 minutes. You should obtain 18-14 balls.

Decorating Ingredients

• 400g (14oz) milk chocolate
• 50g (2oz) white chocolate and orange food colouring
• Sprinkles, sugar stars, edible glitter, marzipan orange slices

Melt the milk chocolate in a double saucepan and, using the same number of rolled paper lollipop sticks as you have balls, insert each stick into the melted chocolate to a depth of around 2 cm. Then insert the sticks into the chilled cake balls to about half the depth of the ball. Put them back on the tray to set.

Once the chocolate has set and the sticks are firm to the touch, lift each one and dip the pop into the melted milk chocolate, ensuring you coat the whole surface, including about the first centimetre of the stick. Now tap off any excess and either add the sprinkles of your choice to the molten chocolate or just push the plain milk chocolate cake pops into a polystyrene block to set.

If you are using the white chocolate method, melt the chocolate in a double saucepan and add orange food colouring. Now either dip the milk chocolate cake balls to half their depth in the orange chocolate topping before returning to the polystyrene so that you can ‘glue’ a marzipan orange slice to the top of the orange chocolate, or pipe the orange chocolate in a random zigzag over the cake pops before sprinkling with edible glitter. Why not try a more sophisticated Adult Version of the Cake Pop?