Marriage Equality Cake Pops

For class yesterday I had to bring in something for a call to action, as well as a dessert. I decided to combine the two and make these. I did my speech on legalizing gay marriage in California, something very personal for me, and I have been wanting to try to make cake pops for a long time. My original idea didn't work out, but these turned out positively adorable, and I'm very pleased.

A huge shout out to Marz for helping me obtain the ingredients and do the first steps- every baker needs some help!

The original recipe comes from bakerella.com, and it's very simple!

1 box cake mix (cook as directed on box for 13 X 9 cake)
1 can frosting (16 oz.)
Wax paper
candy melts (1 lb. pkg.)
Lollipop sticks
Edible ink pens or sprinkles

1. After cake is cooked and cooled completely, crumble into large bowl.
2. Mix thoroughly with 1 can frosting. (I use the back of a large spoon, but it may be easier to use fingers to mix together. But, be warned, it will get messy. Also, you may not need the entire can of frosting, so start out by using almost the entire can and add more if you need to.)
3. Roll mixture into quarter size balls and place on wax paper covered cookie sheet. (Should make 45-50)
4. Melt chocolate in the microwave per directions on package. (30 sec intervals, stirring in between.)
5. Dip the tip of your lollipop stick in a little of the melted candy coating and insert into the cake balls. (Insert a little less than halfway.)
6. Place them in the freezer for a little while to firm up.
7. Once firm, carefully insert the cake ball into the candy coating by holding the lollipop stick and rotating until covered. Once covered remove and softly tap and rotate until the excess chocolate falls off. Don’t tap too hard or the cake ball will fall off, too.
8. Place in a styrofoam block to dry.
9. Decorate as desired
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I didn't take step by step pictures, but I hope you'll forgive me.



Thats about 1/3 of what the recipe made. Yum!

Here are a few close up shots, before they got put into bags :)






Heidi, my awesome girlfriend, helped me put them into bags, and tie them with ribbons. Inside of the bags, we wrote out a message for each member of my class to sign an online petition for gay marriage.
The message read:
"Please visit www.hrc.org/millionformarriage and sign the petition for marriage equality"

And this is what they looked like before I distributed them to the class:



They were very fun to make- not the easiest thing I've made, but definitely worth it. And I've been wanting to do it for so long that it really helped prove I could do it!

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

So for my first entry, I wanted to start with something pretty safe. Nothing too crazy or adventurous, and I definitely didn't want to try anything I could fail at. So upon doing an inventory of the kitchen, I realized I have a whole bunch of frozen ripe bananas. I've tried to make banana bread before, and it's always been missing something. Either too sweet, or it didn't rise all the way, or I didn't cook it long enough and it's a bit underdone. So I turned to my favorite recipe source, foodgawker, to try to find a recipe that I wanted to make.
I found this delicious looking recipe by a blog entitled "Dad can Cook". Mini chocolate chip muffins? Yes please!

I followed the recipe pretty darn closely- I added a little more cinnamon and one more banana, because I can. But other than that, it's pretty spot on




So here we go- the first recipe post of this blog!

The bananas were very frozen. QUITE frozen. So I took them out of the freezer, and went to town. A tip for anyone going to make these: take them out of the freezer the night before, and let them defrost in the fridge overnight. I zapped them for a few seconds in the microwave, which worked well as long as I monitored the power level on the microwave.



By the time I finished peeling these 3 bananas my hands were very cold. So I took a break and got out all of my ingredients. For this recipe you'll need flour, brown sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, butter, 2 eggs, vanilla, and of course chocolate chips. Ignore the oil and salt in the pictures, I had gotten out the ingredients before deciding on a recipe.



Combine the dry ingredients together in a bowl. I'm not usually one to use separate bowls, but for you guys I did! :)



Then in another bowl combine the sugar with the softened butter.



Mix until combined. By spoon, a few minutes- took me about 5. If you use a mixer, 3-5 minutes.



Add the eggs one at a time, stirring until combined.



Then add the vanilla.



Add the dry bowl of ingredients to the wet ingredients. Yum.



Add the mashed bananas and stir





Add the chocolate chips and eat some, because I totally did.



I always leave a gigantic mess when I cook, which Heidi can attest to. I took photographic evidence this time. Sorry, babe.



I cleaned up and played with my cute puppy. If you have one, I'd strongly suggest you play with him too.




Then put the batter in mini muffin pans. Fill about halfway, or they'll overflow. And then put them in the oven at 350 degrees. Bake them for about 14 minutes.



And when they come out... they'll look like this.




And then I ate one....




All in all, I'd say this was pretty much a successful venture. They were delicious straight out of the oven- warm and chocolatey and the perfect texture. After they cooled down they were still pretty good, but the banana gave them a little bit of grease. If I were to make it again, I'd probably use 2.5 bananas, not 3.

Here's the recipe written out simply, without the pictures :) For those of you who like to just read it.

Ingredients

½ cup butter at room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon (i used probably 1.5)
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cloves
2 medium bananas, mashed. About 1 ¼ cups (i used 3!)
1 cup chocolate chips plus reserve extra chips to top the muffins with


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Directions

Spray the cups of a 24 count mini muffin pan.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a bowl sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves. Set aside.
In a mixer, on medium speed, cream the butter and sugar until smooth. About 3-5 minutes.
Mix in eggs one at a time, until well incorporated.
Stir in vanilla.
On low, slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet until just combined.
Stir in the mashed banana.
Fold in the chocolate chips.
Spoon the batter into the muffin cups till about ¾ full.
Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until the tops are light brown and a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean. (I only needed 14 minutes)

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Enjoy! Tell me how they worked for you if you make them!!!

Let's give this a try!

I started a cooking blog a while ago, after Julie and Julia came out, with my girlfriend. We never did anything on it, and I realized I wanted to really try this. So I made my own, and I'm hoping to start posting recipes, pictures, and other awesome cooking and baking stuff.
What do you want to see? Things that I've been meaning to try soon are: cake pops (bakerella.com) and possibly some banana muffins. But I'm open to nearly anything!