Easter Cake Pops and other March madness.

Posted by Ethne~

This past weekend was the first of our family Easter celebrations, this time with Shaun’s side of the family.  Shaun’s parents always host, and it’s one of the times of the year when his extended fam comes together, including all the little cousins who are KD and Easy Mac’s age.  They are in hyperactive-hyperdrive (if you don’t know that reference, Toy Story obviously wasn’t your napping movie in college).

There were 17 of these shots total of the kids running, taken on my camera's speed mode - you get the idea.

I’ll back up to tell you that I had to make a last-minute modification to the girls’ Easter outfits.  I got them twirly dresses from Land’s End, which are totally cute.  Not the frilly things I put them in for Easters past.  These are a little more grown-girl (is that a fashion style?) but the skirt twirls out full to the waist when they spin – this is key.  The problem is that WEEKS ago, I bought them adorable pink flower sandals to go with the pink on the dresses.  Surely we would be able to wear sandals by March 24?  Nope.  So off to the store we went.  The caveat, Shaun recommended that I allow the girls to pick out their own shoes.  So I did, and they came home with black patent-leather kitten heels.  A-DOR-ABLE.  Shaun expected I was allowing them to pick out a new functional everyday shoe, seeing as they fight us every morning with their current selection, so we clearly were lacking in communication as to what type of shoes were being purchased.  Fortunately, since these children take after their mother, no broken ankles have yet occurred.  And they love their “high heels”… even at 5:30 a.m., on the wood floors, on Sunday.

You can see the heel in this one.  KD is a little diva.

So prior to shoe shopping, I prepared my dessert for Sunday’s feast, which was my contribution to the meal.  I received a cake-pop iron from my brother- and sister-in-law for Christmas.  They’re pretty simple to make, and you don’t have to buy the iron to do so – I’ve seen cake pop kits in the baking aisle at Target - but I haven’t tested the other options, FYI.  The trick is getting your sticks to stay in the cakes, and I think I know the secret – it’s the type of icing.  You gotta do the Almond Bark/Candiqwik, melted down per instructions with a tablespoon or two of white shortening and, in this case, a few drops of gel food coloring until I had the colors I liked.  Stir together till smooth, dip the sticks in first, insert stick, dip the whole pop in, then allow to cool, either standing cake up or cake down.  Sprinkle with candy or sugar sprinkles while the icing is still cool.

This is what happens when you don't do the right icing - bad.  Delicious, but bad.

 

I decided to make my cake pops into a little Easter egg hunt in grass on my pastel platter (which was broken yesterday BTW), so I dried them cake down so they would hide in the grass.  The grass is the plastic kind ($.50 from Target) because I didn’t want the paper kind to bleed onto my cakes, and I also had little candy eggs hidden in the grass too.  Special for Shaun, I hid a few black jellybeans.

Beautiful little Easter eggs

KD eating one of at least two

Didn’t they turn out just darling?

PS - you gotta check out Pinterest, You Are Drunk right now.  They've got an Easter special going on right now with the wacky stuff pinned.  It's pretty funny.