Red Velvet Bakepop Cake Bites with Chocolate Coating

My Bakepop pans arrived! 

I think there is a little learning curve to this.  I may have overfilled the pan a little which made my cake balls look like mars.  I also overcooked them a bit as an unexpected visit from the carpet cleaning man took place as my cooking time was nearing the end.  But since they weren't officially charred, I decided to go ahead with my first chocolate candy coating dipping of the bites.  I only made about 10 and threw out the rest of the batch because I thought it would taste awful.  As it turns out, everyone was oblivious to the overcookage and this was the most attention I've received over my baking in a LONG time.  Love these pans, the lighter consistency of the cake seems much more tasty than a frosting laden gooey hand rolled cake ball.  WAY cleaner process too.

A few tips:
~ Use cooking spray made for baking with flour in it.
~ Add a complimentary box of pudding to your cake mix (Ie, I added chocolate to go with my red velvet cake mix).
~ Use water instead of milk on the cake box instructions, and half the amount of liquid.

Spray pans, and also spray the top where cake will ooze out.

Add your doctored cake mix.  Use the bakepop instruction booklet.

Close with these little yellow clasps.

Mine seriously oozed out the top.  But, it pops off very easily with a push from a rubberized spatula.

See, ooze is gone.

Wow, they're really balls.  See the bottom left ball?  They almost all had that ridge.  I used a kitchen scissor to quickly trim that off. 
Less tedious than crumbling an entire cake and mixing icing into it.

Finished cake balls.  A bit too crispy and slight smell of burnt cake but not really DARK brown. 

1pkg chocolate candy melts

microwave for 30 second intervals, and stir.  you can add a little crisco if needed but I didn't find it necessary.

My first cake ball ever!

I used a toothpick for all of these.  Not very durable, but doable.

Added some sprinkles.

Dessert is served!

Boys Love to Cook Also! More Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Since the girls had the chance to bake cookies recently, Griffin expressed a real interest in whipping up a batch himself so we took advantage of his day off from school to make REAL chocolate chip cookies without the mint!
We used the recipe in the cookbook "Cookies" instead of our usual chippits package of chocolate chips recipe.

Captain Cooking with the ingredients laid out

Pure Vanilla, every time

Measuring his flour

The fine art of gradually adding flour to the mixer

Learning how to pour the vanilla onto the edge of the bowl

Damp Tea towel to catch the dusty flour and it's time to add the chips!

Yummy cookie dough goodness

Discovering why we scrape the edges before we finish mixing

Good Ole Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

Baking with my girl.  I measured all of the ingredients out and then let Lily be in charge of adding it gradually to the mixer and sizing out the portions.  She is a big fan of adding mint to the batch but this time we omitted the green "minty" food colouring. 
These turned out grrrreat!

To add Maltesers, or NOT add Maltesers....THAT is the Question.

Paul came home with a french vanilla cake mix and a large bag of maltesers.  His excitement was pretty high because he spent a while at work having the legendary "What dessert would you eat for the rest of your life, if you could only choose one dessert." epic conversation.  Somewhere along the way, a colleague mentioned that she adds maltesers to her cupcakes and it's WONDERFUL. 

So I got the kids cracking on whipping these up for Daddy.  If you ask me, I would have gone in a reeses peanut butter cup, hershey's kiss or even a Rolo kind of direction for the melty goodness...but who am I to judge? 

In the end, I found the contrast of a crunchy center to be a bit strange.  I would definitely repeat this with something softer in the future though.

Green Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies with my Little Helper

My kids spent the day at Wonderland with their Nonna & Zia.  I still had B scheduled to spend the day with me though, so without her playmates, I knew we had to schedule in some baking time!  Lily had been requesting Mint chocolate chip cookies inspired by her Irish friend Briare.  Apparently Braire's Dad makes a mean mint chocolate chip cookie, and they're GREEN.  So we got busy trying to replicate them as a surprise for Lily. 

So we used the typical Chippits recipe and added green food colouring and peppermint extract.  I was especially excited about taking one of my new portion scoops out for it's maiden voyage!