Christmas cake pops

Every year I like to make something for friends and neighbors for Christmas.  This is not really something I have seen here in New Zealand but it is a tradition I love from growing up so its something I want to carry on.  This year I have had a ton of leftover cake from the off-cuts of the 75 Christmas cakes I have had to make so I decided to give cake pops a go again.  I enlisted the help of my daughter and it turned out to be much easier this time.  I read a hint recently that to get the stick to stay on you freeze the cake onto the stick before dipping it in the chocolate.  This works a treat and I had no trouble. 

To make cake pops I took about a cup to two cups of leftover cake and mixed it with a tablespoon of icing.  I then put it in a food processor and mixed it until the mixture comes together and you can form balls.  This is a pretty flexible recipe so just make it as moist as you like.  I don't like my cake too moist so I prefer to use as little icing as possible.  I rolled the cake mixture into little balls and put lollipop sticks into them (you can get these at spotlight in New Zealand).  I then put them in the freezer and let them set for a couple of hours. 

Once the cake pops had set in the freezer I melted chocolate specifically designed for making chocolates (Nestle Melts work great!).   I dipped the cake pops into the chocolate and let the chocolate drip for a couple seconds to get a smooth finish on them.

Quickly before the chocolate had hardened I added pretzels I had split in two to either side of the chocolate ball and a little red nose made out of fondant (you can purchase red candy balls and use this instead).  

For the eyes and mouth I made some royal icing (you can buy ready made icing from spotlight or the supermarket for this very thing) and piped the eyes and mouth on.  You can also purchase an edible pen to draw the face on (in Tauranga you can get this from Culinary Council).  

This is a really fun project to do with your littlies who will love the reindeer!  If you want to give this a go and live in Tauranga I have a ton of leftover cake thats wanting to be used so send me an email.  For those a little braver you can try out this Christmas tree cake pop as well.  I used powdered colouring and added it to white chocolate Nestle melts to get the green colour and I used star sprinkles for the decorations.