TUTORIAL TUESDAYS: Russian Doll Cake Pops

Hey again everyone!

Sorry that it's not actually Tuesday when I am posting this. Before I did this tutorial I wanted to make some more cake pops so I could produce better instructions. After doing them again I believe I have mastered the art of making and covering the pops, it's just the decorating bit that I need to perfect now as it is quite fiddly. Practice makes perfect though :D

So with all the sunshine at the moment it is hard to resist sitting outside but I have been quite good doing work and am sat in the library again today :(. We are having a girls night out tonight though so that's something to look forward to!

Anyway on to the tutorial:

1) Use 4oz margarine, 4oz self-raising flour, 4oz caster sugar and 2 tablespoons of cocoa to produce a cake mix, put in a 19inch tin and cook on 170 for 25 mins.

2) Leave to cool in the tin for 10-20 mins then take out of the tin and leave to cool properly for a few hours. I didn't find any problems in putting it in the fridge.

3) Use a food processor to blend the cake into crumbs. Whilst mixing 85g of cream cheese and 140g of icing sugar together in a bowl.

4) Add the mixture to the cake crumbs and combine until it is fully incorporated and the mixture is moist.

5) Use scales to measure out 1oz of the mixture. Split this into 0.3oz and 0.7oz bits and roll each bit into a ball using your hands. The smaller ball will be the head of the Russian doll and the larger ball will be the body. Repeat this until the mixture is used up. The recipe I used initially said this mix produced 20 cake pops, I have made this twice and got 18 each time.

6) Put on a plate in the fridge and leave for a few hours.

7) Get 150g of coloured or plain chocolate. For this I used 1 and a half bags of Silverspoon's orange chocolate buttons. These can be found in most Sainsbury's and I presume other larger supermarkets.  Melt the chocolate slowly in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time stirring for 10 second in between so the chocolate doesn't burn.

8) Once the chocolate is a smooth consistency, take a few of the heads and bodies out of the fridge on a plate. Dip the head into the chocolate and stick to the body. Do this for all and then return to the fridge. Then take a few more out and repeat the process until all of the heads are stuck to the bodies and they are back in the fridge.

9) Remove the few you first stuck together from the fridge. Then get 18 lolly sticks and put the end of one (about 1cm) into the chocolate and then into the cake pop. Leave them to set for around a minute.

10) Holding the end of the stick dip the cake pop into the bowl of chocolate to cover the cake pop. Use a spoon if necessary then shake the pop gently to remove excess chocolate. Stand in polystyrene or an upside down colander to set for around 15-20 mins. Do this for the rest of the pops.

(Keep stirring the chocolate so that it remains smooth. If it gets a little hard put back into the microwave for a few seconds)

11) Once all the pops are covered and set comes the fiddly part the decorating. Break up and melt around 40g of white chocolate in a small bowl as before. Use a teaspoon of the chocolate and dip the front of the head gently onto the spoon for the faces. Do this for all pops and let dry.

12) Then use edible pens to draw on the faces and decorate. I bought a red and a black pen the other day so I will review these in a blog this week :). If you don't want to use pens you can use black food colouring and a paint brush to paint on the features. Do not use other colours of food colouring as I have found red and pink turn a funny brown colour.

13) Leave to set for about half an hour and voila:

Singular Russian Doll

Group in Polystyrene

Sorry about the mess, chocolate runs everywhere!

As you can see Some of the faces were quite hard to do, especially applying the white chocolate. Never the less I am fairly happy with them and no doubt will give them another shot soon.
I will again put a full clearer recipe on the task bar at the top. So why not give it go? Lolly sticks can be bought of Amazon :D


Samantha Who (Loves to Bake)