Friday, October 8, 2010

Bakerella's Surprise



The weekend is coming and I am home with lots of time so I've decided to dedicate a fair amount of time to cooking, specifically baking. I've long wanted to enter Bakerella world — Rachel and I have a shared obsession with Bakerella, the originator of the amazing cake pops. We love her blog and regularly worship there, so I thought this would be the perfect time to try to make one of her fabulous cake pops. We have some friends whose children have a birthday this weekend, so what better gift for them than cake pops? I mean, just look at these cute jack 'o lanterns from her book?

I've had a copy of Bakerella's new book, Cake Pops, from Chronicle Books on hand for a few weeks but have been waiting for exactly the right moment to open and learn the secret of these marvelous little sweets. Tonight, after a ridiculously stressful week of work, I decided to treat myself and open the book to see how the magic happens so I could get any ingredients I need to make the cake pops.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

The foundation of cake pops is ... box cake mix. And the frosting is ... ready-made.

I have to admit my jaw dropped.

To be fair to Bakerella, who is clearly a talented lady, she clearly says all over her blog that she uses box cake mix. But I just always got so tied up in the visuals of her clever little cake pops and goodies that I actually never noticed it before. So while I have nothing against using box cake mix, I just assumed everything was from scratch (I know, I know, I know what they say; if you assume, it makes an ass out of u and me) so this box cake mix thing just ... surprised me.

Once I got over the shock (clearly I'm a cooking snob since I just assumed everyone of her talent would do everything from scratch), I got kind of excited. The creation of these cake pops is going to be tough enough for someone like me who is, um, artistically challenged. I don't have to add tons of baking-from-scratch time to my agitata. I can just toss together the cake mix and spend all my time on the artsy part.

Stay tuned. Monday's post will show the fruits of my labors, no matter how ridiculous they look.

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