- [Man] This episode is
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$20 off your first purchase. Link is in the video description. (upbeat music) (upbeat mellow music) All right, so the first thing that goes into a great cake pop is a great cake. So that's precisely what we're gonna make. We're gonna start with the chocolate cake, generously lubing, every nook and cranny of our favorite 10 inch
cake pan with butter. Then to make it super
duper ultra nonstick, we're gonna dust it with the cocoa powder, tapping around until
every surface is coated. Once our pan is prepped and set it aside 'cause it's time to make some cake. We're gonna start by
making a chocolate paste, combining 180 grams of boiling water with 100 grams of cocoa powder. Tiny whisk that until homogenous and then cool things off
so we don't cook our eggs. We're adding 210 grams of whole milk. Once again, tiny whisking until smooth, and then setting aside. That's our liquid so now, we're gonna similarly
combine our dry ingredients. We had 270 grams of all purpose flour, a teaspoon and a half of baking powder, three quarters of a teaspoon baking soda, and a teaspoon of kosher salt, maybe in a slightly larger bowl. So we got room to whisk. Now into the bowl of a
stand mixer goes 190 grams of unsalted room, temperature, butter, and 450 grams of granulated sugar, which we're gonna cream together using the paddle attachment, not the whisk attachment, Andy. Come on, you're better than this, or rather you not better
than this, but come on. We are creaming these guys
together on medium high speed until light and fluffy, anywhere
from two to four minutes. Once that's done, we're scraping down the sides of the bowl
and then one at a time adding four eggs, which as you can see, I have in a bowl of tepid water because it's a way to quickly bring eggs up to room temperature
if they were in the fridge. Cold eggs into room temperature butter can cause the butter to seize up, which can cause your
cake batter to separate which isn't the end of the world, but it can affect your final texture. Once you've added the eggs beating and scraping down the sides
of the bowl between each egg, it's time to start
alternately adding the wet and dry ingredients. We're starting with a third
of the dry ingredients, mixing to combine followed by half the wet and we're scraping down
the sides of the bowl. Adding another third
of the dry ingredients, the rest of the wet
ingredients scraping down the bowl again and adding
the last of the dry by hand so as to not overwork the gluten. This should yield a smooth, delicious chocolate cake, batter that bakes up evenly and
without any associated drama. We're now tipping it into
our prepared cake pans, spreading it flat, tapping it if necessary and placing it into a 350
degree Fahrenheit preheated oven for 25 to 35 minutes until a cake tester inserted into the thickest
part, emerges clean and, or it clocks 200 to
210 degrees Fahrenheit at its thickest point. We're letting it cool in
the pan for 10 to 15 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack where we're gonna allow
it to cool completely at least two hours. Before we dash it's dreams of becoming a big, beautiful tiered cake
and smash it into cake pops. I'm sorry, my friend, you got
a rough road ahead of you. Next up, we're gonna melt some chocolate for the exterior shell of our cake pops. Now you could just melt it, dip it and throw it in the fridge,
but tempering your chocolate is gonna give you a
shinier, snappier shell. One that also sets that room temperature. To do this, we're dividing our chocolate into two separate
categories, melting and seed. Most of the chocolate
is gonna be for melting. It can be just roughly chopped cause we're gonna melt it. But the seed chocolate needs to be chopped very, very finely so that it melts in our
main batch of chocolate without putting up a fuss. We are melting our chocolate
and a double boiler or in a bowl set over a
pan of simmering water, or until it's just melted and smooth. We don't want it to get any higher than 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Then we're taking it off the heat, wiping down the bowl. Water is the enemy of tempered chocolate and add our seed chocolate, which is both gonna cool down the
chocolate and reintroduce crystallized cellular something
to the molecular whatever. Just keep stirring until the
seed chocolate is melted. Adding more finely chopped
chocolate, if necessary until the chocolate cools
down to the sweet spot of 88 to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. The chocolate can then be
held at this temperature, warmed up slightly to keep it liquid, but try not to get it above
95 degrees Fahrenheit. Now for the core of our cake pops, we need a binder in the form of frosting. So we're combining 60 grams of unsalted, room temperature, butter,
180 grams of powdered sugar, 30 grams of whole milk and an eighth of a teaspoon
of peppermint extract. Go ahead and whip that together
until it's nice and smooth and there you have it,
some peppermint frosting. And with that, we are
finally ready to assemble. We're gonna start by breaking
up our chocolate cake into relatively fine crumbs. Try to lose any big
chunks or crispy edges. These could ruin the
texture of your cake pops and they make a great snack for the chef. Once he got that pretty well broken up, it's time to add our peppermint frosting and massage together into
what we'll call a cake dough, a thick, soft shapeable substance that we can begin pressing and rolling into golf ball sized cake balls. Rinse and repeat until all
the cake dough has been balled and then it's time to start sticking it. Grab your cake pop handle of choice, dip it in your tempered chocolate and stab it into your cake balls, which will semi-permanently
secure the handle in place once the chocolate solidifies,
give those guys 15, 20 minutes to set, and then, we can finally commence the dipping. I found the best way to do
this was to drop the cake pop inverted into the chocolate,
spoon more chocolate up and around the sides and
then slowly pull the cake pop out of the chocolate while swirling. This prevents too much chocolate from running down the handle
and ruining your aesthetic. Sprinkles and crushed up
candy cane on the chocolate while it's still wet
and there you have it, chocolate peppermint cake pops. Pretty as you please and every bit as delicious as you might imagine. Next up, we're doing both pumpkin spice and birthday cake cake pops, for which I'm gonna make
a double batch of cake. So don't pay attention to the
amounts you see on screen. Just listen to what I'm
saying with my voice. We're starting off the
same way with the butter, sugar and eggs, creaming, the
butter and sugar together, adding the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl
between each addition. And this time, our dry
ingredients are 350 grams of all purpose flour,
two and a half teaspoons of baking powder and one
teaspoon of kosher salt. Once again, place into a larger
bowl for easier whisking. It would seem as though I
haven't learned my lesson, then we're back to adding
the dry and wet ingredients in alternating increments. This time, our wet ingredients being 300 milliliters of buttermilk and two and a half
tablespoons of vanilla paste. If you don't have vanilla
paste, vanilla extract is fine. Just downgrade it to like two teaspoons instead of two tablespoons. Once the cake batter comes together, it's pretty much the same procedure. This time, turning the batter out into a buttered and parchment
paper lined baking vessel. You can use your 10 inch cake pan, but since I'm doing a double batch, I've got my nine by 13 casserole. This guy's headed into the
same 350 degree Fahrenheit oven until the thickest point registers 200 to 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Same deal. Let it cool in the pan for 15
minutes before turning it out and allowing it to cool
completely on a wire rack before breaking up into cakey crumbles, which we're gonna combine with
the same recipe of frosting. This time, instead of peppermint extract, I added sprinkles because we're making birthday cake cake pops. Go ahead massage that together until it forms a cohesive dough, roll them into balls and this time, we're coating them in
birthday cake crumbles in this recipe inspired by Christina Tosi. Into a bowl, goes three
quarters of a cup of flour, half a cup of granulated sugar, a tablespoon and a half
of light brown sugar, half teaspoon, each baking
powder and kosher salt, and two tablespoons of rainbow sprinkles that we're gonna sort of
break up and make sure that everything is evenly distributed before adding a quarter
cup of vegetable oil and one tablespoon of vanilla extract. Go ahead and mix this together until it forms a crumbly mixture, reminiscent very, very wet sand. You should be able to bunch
together a little bit. You want big and small chunks
that we're gonna spread out onto a parchment lined baking sheet and bake in a 300 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 15 minutes,
shaking or tossing around halfway through baking until
they're lightly browned and smelling really, really good. Then so we can coat our cake pops in it, we're gonna toss it into a food processor and blitz it a few times until we have a sandy crunchy delicious
birthday cake powder. Now to make that adhere to the cake balls, we're gonna start by coating them in a little bit of white chocolate. No need to temper here. Tempering white chocolate
is an absolute nightmare. Once he got a thin layer of
sticky white chocolate on the outside of the ball, you can
drop it into a cake crumbs, rolling them around the
crumbs to coat in the crumbs and what we've got here, basically the birthday cake
truffles from milk bar, which we're gonna skewer
with some white chocolate dip sticks to turn them into birthday cake, truffle cake pops. I think these guys taste best
refrigerated and they're still awesome right now, as I'm
recording this voiceover a week later. Next and last, we have
the reason for the season, pumpkin spice cake pops. I've got the same base
cake and frosting here, but I've added one
tablespoon of pumpkin spice to the frosting. Mix and massage, form in balls and then to really drive
home what you're eating, we're gonna make these guys
look like little pumpkins, adding some orange food coloring to our white chocolate before
skewering the cake balls, letting those set for 10 minutes and then coating it in the chocolate. Once these guys have set, I've got some white
chocolate that I've colored with a little bit of green food coloring to give them a little stem, just so you really know what
you're about to get into when you eat this thing. Now for decoration and presentation, one of these cake pop stands makes for a semi elegant solution, but if you've got a hunk
of styrofoam laying around, now is your opportunity to
make a cake pop bouquet, not to mention impress your friends with your Martha Stewart like aesthetic. So there you have it. Three different delicious
varieties of cake pops. My favorite of which has gotta
be the birthday cake one. That Christina Tosi really
knows her way around the cake. Thanks again to Cometeer
for sponsoring this episode. You guys know, I love me some coffee. So I had to try out Cometeer for myself to see how it works and
it's really impressive. Cometeer partners with the
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the video description. (upbeat music continues)
