How to: Black and white Mickey Mouse/Disney cake pops

My mom ordered cake pops but gave me the choice of how they would look. Those are nice orders because I can try out ideas I have without spending too much money on it. Of course I did not charge her for the fact that they weren't all the same and much more work than your standard cake pop, so it's a good deal for both of us (in my opinion anyway). 

I wanted to make black and white Fab 4 cake pops (sorry to me that will never be the Beatles..) with a color accent. Unfortunately I didn't have green or blue fondant in the house so I kept those black and white. I actually like them this way too. I think Donald Duck is very recognizable, Goofy could use a green hat and maybe some ears though.

Mickey would probably have turned out better if his buttons had been red. Wouter didn't recognize him at all, even with Minnie right next to it... Minnie turned out great in my opinion. The heart shaped confetti worked great as a bow. 

I also made these pops with the intention of adding as little sugar as I possibly could. I therefore tried to stay away from buttercream and Candy melts, instead using a sugarfree cake recipe, ganache and chocolate.

It was a good try with fairly satisfactory results!

For those of you who are interested in a more thorough description of what I did, I added a how to here. Otherwise you can stop reading and maybe pin my picture for me :)

HOW TO:

(also check out the Mickey Mouse no-bake cake pop post)

The filling consists of Honey Ginger Cake. I found the recipe on Homemade Baby Food Recipes.com where they also have a lot of other great sugarfree cake recipes.

I had some white chocolate ganache which I had taken out of the freezer the day before. After I crumbled the cake to pieces, I used this to stick it back together. The cake is quite moist on its own and I found that I probably could have rolled satisfactory balls without adding the ganache. Anyhoo... I rolled the mixture into balls which were way too big and then coated them with a bit of wholewheat flour just so they wouldn't be so sticky. I put them into a egg tray with plastic wrap over it and used yellow Wilton Candy melt to stick a lolly pop stick into them. (I used Candy melt because you cannot temper that small amount of chocolate.) I put the tray into the freezer for at least 15 minutes so the pops would be hard and easy to work with (hmmm sounds weird, hard and easy... you get what I mean right?)

While the pops were in the freezer I made the Mouse ears. I used chocolate drops and an apple corer. This made a nice round piece of chocolate that wasn't too thin. I also tempered white chocolate (don't know how? Check here).

I coated all the pops in white chocolate first. A quarter of the pops I put on a piece of baking paper, those were going to be the Goofy's and half I added ears to. Because the pops came from the freezer the ears needed to go on quickly, because the chocolate sets really fast. It's good though because you don't risk the ears falling off before it's set.

I wanted to use the gold balls as in the picture above for Mickey buttons. I had it all set up but then completely forgot to stick them on after dipping. When I remembered the chocolate had long since set. It beats having to draw them on though, so I would definitely do this next time.

After all the pops were dipped in white chocolate I put them in a pop holder thing and put them back in the freezer. Meanwhile I tempered dark chocolate.

Mickey, Minnie and Donald have their top half in dark chocolate and Goofy the bottom, though because his stick is on top what you're doing is the same.

Minnie got two heart shaped confetti candies on top her head and I made the spots on here dress with a lollypop stick dipped in chocolate. That's also how I made the lines on Goofy, though I think I'll use a brush for that next time.

Mickey's buttons are made from yellow Wilton Candy Melt, but as I said before I'll use the gold balls next time.

Goofy's hat and Donald's hat and bow are made from white fondant.

Make it beautiful!

The budget wedding cake

My last post might have given off the impression that I thought the bride and groom were seriously underpaying for their cake. This was not my intention and while there were some parts where I was doing work I wasn't being paid for (like getting all the cakes the same size) overall the cake and the time I spend on it reflects the budget. So I was happy with that!

Now I'm on to the birthday of my baby girl which is super fun!

As she is turning the very young age of just 1, I don't want to give her a really sweet, packed full of evil food coloring, cake. After a quick and fruitful search on google (baby first birthday cake recipe were my search words) I came across a wonderful site full of lovely baby cake recipes.

My eye immediately fell on the honey and ginger cake which sounds and looks yummy. I'm really excited to make it and have decided to use it for my mom's cake pop order which is for Friday.

So here is the recipe if you're interested:
No it's not, I checked out the disclaimer and they might not be happy if I print the recipe here but you can check it out on their website: Homemade baby food recipes. 

I´m going to make Disney´s Fab 5 cake pops with it. I haven´t quite decided on how to stick the cake together to form the balls, I´m thinking cream cheese or maybe melted chocolate, or ganache... not sure. I have a bunch of ganache in the freezer so that would be a good choice. It might taste weird together though. I´ll have to try.

Anyway here is my Fab 5 cake pop idea:

I'm hoping it will be pretty easy. I want to make them as a birthday treat for when we go on our family reunion weekend next week. The idea looks cute...

What I'm up to: wedding cake!

I make cakes for a living now, though I don't actually make enough for that to be completely true. I've made a fair few though and sometimes even have the feeling I know what I'm talking about. If you do the same, you might recognize the moment when you realize you really did not charge enough for the cake you're making. Usually it happens quite late, probably during the decorating process, but today I got it while making the batter for the second cake. sh...#(@*)$*..t

I'm doing a wedding cake, sort of. The happily engaged couple are just out of college and thought the wedding cake prices were too steep. If you're marrying, going on your honeymoon and moving within the same month I can see how you need to keep to your budget and since I know them I suggested to make normal cakes. They won't be stacked and they won't be as luxurious as wedding cakes usually are but it could work and instead of paying 800 euros they only have to spend 200 excluding 3D flowers which cost extra. They were happy with the idea and then came with (I have to secretly admit) a brilliant plan to buy a cake stand which they will sell again after the wedding.

The cake stand

So they'll have 4 cakes that look exactly the same but have different tastes on the inside. I charged a little bit for that because it's one order but while I was making the batter I thought: if they are not all the same flavor, they won't all be the same height because they don't rise in the same way. hmmm. Do I have to fix that? Or do I treat them as separate cakes and thus it's not my problem they are not exactly alike. hmmm. So that was one moment when I figured maybe I should have charged just a little more because time is money, and if you don't want to pay for it, then I shouldn't be spending more time on it, right?

The other problem with this cake is that this was their idea:

I´m not sure where this pic comes from so I cannot credit. If you recognize it please let me know!

It´s a very pretty 3 tier cake with 3D flowers and swirly things. They wanted their cake to look like the middle tier which I thought would be very gorgeous. So I told them the price of the roses and the 5 petal flowers and they said Ok we want one rose and one other flower. ....
I figured I should not beat around the bush as they say about a wedding cake so I said very clearly and in these exact words (except they were Dutch): It will NOT look anything like this then... you do understand that right?!
Yes they did.

I have to make a pretty cake so I told them that flat decoration was included and I could make a bunch of flat 5 petal flowers so it at least looks a little like the pic. This was my idea:

Two 5 petal flowers are 3D the rest is flat. It looks ok in the pic but I hope it turns out that way on the cake too... It's one of those moments that I wish the bride and groom had spend just a little bit more on it. It would have maybe cost 20 euros more to have just a few more flowers to get it to look really nice. Now I have to make a presentable cake with limited means AND limited time. I will not spend wedding cake time if I'm not getting paid accordingly. That's fair right?
I'll show the outcome next week :)