Gluten-Free Cake Pops (Beware)

I've been seeing lots of fun ideas lately using desserts that are simply made of  little round balls of cake. Cake Pops. Cute. I love the fact that they can be decorated to look like anything you can imagine. I like the portion control aspect. I think they look cool on a table all decorated for a birthday party or baby shower.

I thought I would try them. 

How hard could it be? 

I had never even tasted one, being a gluten-free/dairy-free consumer, so I got excited about making a batch for my Bunco group (yes I play Bunco...) and serving them a whole meal that was G and D free. 

I planned. Oh, how I planned. I printed out TWO AC Moore 50% coupons (one for me, one for Dr. Who) and planned this huge shopping trip that included groceries for a few weeks AND party food. 

I bought candy sticks. 

I bought a delicious G-free chocolate cake mix. 

My husband bought me a cake pop MAKER. (totally frivolous purchase)

He made me a homemade cake pop stand. (so sweet)

I decided to try it out with some muffins. I normally make myself a batch of lightly sweetened bran muffins for breakfast on the go, so why not turn those crumbly muffins into muffin balls? 

They were totally yummy and super cute. They baked in 5 minutes. I'm LOVING this, right? 

Baking day comes around. It had already been a weird day, beginning with Dr. Who taking Lucy to the vet before church that morning to discover that she had somehow sprained her back. (so sad) Now we are super late for church and we have a dog who is on bed rest for 2 weeks. Church was awesome though. 

Phone Call after church: "I need you guys, I just rear-ended someone" says my sister. Ok, rescued her. Ate lunch, helped sister iron out all the horrible details. Changed into my comfy, warm clothes. 

Let's make some CAKE POPS!! 

The cake batter was to die for. I spooned that stuff into the cake pop maker and out came these perfectly shaped little balls of delicious chocolate goodness. 6 at a time. 5 minutes. Lots of batter. 

Ok, it took a while..but things are looking good. 

Then, Dr. Who starts making me a fondant-like icing to dip the cake pops in. All the beautiful recipes I saw said to use candy melt. Candy melt has dairy in it so I figured a marshmallow based icing would harden just as well. 

Nope. 

Ok, let's thicken it. 

Nope. 

Thin it? 

Nope. 

Add food coloring? 

Yaa....Nope. 

No matter what we did, no matter how cold the cake balls were, no matter how fast we got those cake pops into the freezer...the icing just slid. right. off. 

Somewhere in this process I started yelling at Dr. Who a little bit (Bad Bonnie, Bad!). I could see my perfect Bunco evening slipping through my fingers, just like my failed icing. 

I gave up for a while. Cleaned up the mess, shoved all the cake balls into the freezer...looked at Pinterest...came back. 

Then I made some buttercream icing. I colored it blue, I made it as thick as possible. I felt good about it this time. I grabbed a couple cake balls out of the freezer and just started icing them by hand. It went well....

But friends, when you put a frozen cake ball on a stick....it tends to spin around while you are trying to put frosting on it...like a tiny little rotating planet. So I gritted my teeth and I frosted the heck out of 12 cake pops. They spun, I cursed...err....prayed....but dang it I FROSTED THOSE CAKE POPS!

Pink sprinkles hid a lot of the bad spots. 

Next Day:

I had received some tips from dear friends on Facebook, so I tried those tips. They didn't work...but I'm grateful for their concern. I wanted everyone to have 2, so I grabbed 12 more cake balls from the freezer, microwaved my buttercream icing, and drizzled it over the cake balls. Back in the freezer, stuck those lollipop sticks in them, and called it good. 

They were delicious. 

I didn't take any pictures of them. 

In lieu of photos of the end result, I present to you a cartoon I drew about my experience. I drew it on paper, with a Sharpie. 

Enjoy. 

Calm Down Friends!

Oh, and cake pops are evil.

Bonnie