snow pops

As many of you faithful readers know, I am not much of a baker. But I am a good teaser and surpriser and secret keeper! Hahahahaha.

Ahem. But more on that later. Not today. (But soon[ish].)

I do, however, love to look at baked goodies (and eat them, of course). When my dear friend Alyssa and her husband Eric had us all over recently, and she was making these adorable treats (that she discovered here at Bakerella, whose site is like, um, totally fantabulous), I was beyond inspired.

So, I adapted her recipe and have spent the last few days perfecting…snow pops.

Fun. Adorable. Delicious. (Relatively) Easy. Eye Candy. Make Them. Now.

Here’s how I made these:

First, I baked a chocolate cake, following the directions on the box (No, I am not advertising for anyone in this post. These are just the things I bought at Wal-Mart to make my snow pops!).

After I baked it, I cut the cake into six huge chunks and chopped them in my food processor until the cake looked like this:

I ate a little bit of it. Just to, you know, make sure it was okay to eat. It was.

Then, I made up a batch of cream cheese frosting. Remember when I posted that recipe here? In case you don’t, here it is again. Combine:

8 oz. package cream cheese, softened

6 T. butter, softened

1 t. vanilla

1T. cream (or milk)

3 cups powdered sugar

I added the cream cheese frosting, a half cup at a time, to the cake crumbles (until all the cake was moistened with the frosting and was moldable like dough), combining well with a spatula. But of course you can use a spoon. Or your bare hands. A little more than a cup of frosting worked well for me.

Actually, I added a bit too much, so to offset the frosting heavy mixture, I added about a half cup of rolled oats. But hopefully you won’t do that and won’t need to add the oats. Unless you want to, of course. I rather like how mine turned out with them.

I formed the cake mixture into balls, put them on a plate and refrigerated them.

While they were chilling, I opened five bags of white chocolate melt-a-ways. Regular chocolate and candy melts would also work fine.

Prince Charming was cooking venison in the kitchen and he helped me unwrap the individually wrapped white chocolates.

They looked like slabs of butter when they were unwrapped. Small Fry thought they were “cheeses.” I melted mugs full of the chocolates on medium power in the microwave. Of course you could use a double boiler. I don’t have one. Remember? I don’t bake.

After they were melted and I stirred them up, I added a few drops of food coloring to each mug.

Turquoise and raspberry, of course.

Small Fry thought it was hummus and she “wanted some.” I obliged and let all the kids have some apples wedges and a small bowl of the melted delight to dip them into. They were in heaven and left me alone to work on the snow pops for at least 15 more minutes.

Next, I stuck long, wooden dowels into the chilled balls. One by one, I dipped them into the melted candy.

Rotate.

Rotate.

Then, I put sprinkles all over the snow pops quickly before the candy started to harden. Adorable!

The clean up would have to wait until later, for I had snow pop arranging to do!

And what better place to photograph snow pops…

…than in the snow!

And later today, our MSC get to eat them! And you? Are you going to try making these? Please let me know (with photographic evidence) if you do! After all, the more eye candy, the better, right?