White Chocolate Icing Recipe

Cute, creative cake pop concoctions explode in popularity

1 boxed cake mix, baked

¾ can vanilla frosting

Disposable food preparation gloves

3 (1-lb.) packages white chocolate candy coating

1 package of 50 cake pop sticks

1 cake pop stand (available at craft stores)

1 pastry bag

Multicolored candy corn

1 small bag pastel-colored M&Ms

In a large bowl, break up cake into fine crumbs, eliminating chunks. Add frosting; cream together until mixture reaches a Play-Dohlike consistency.

Using your gloved hands, mold batter into small, cone-shaped balls. Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and cover with plastic wrap. Chill for 2 hours in refrigerator.

Melt candy coating, one package at a time, in microwave according to package directions. If coating is too thick, add 3 tablespoons shortening per package and reheat in microwave to achieve a thinner consistency.

Taking a few cake balls out of the refrigerator at a time, dip the end of an empty cake pop stick into melted coating, and then pierce the center of the narrowest end of cake ball, pushing no more than half way through.

Holding stick with pop facing down, dip pop into melted coating. Remove pop slowly and lift upward, allowing excess coating to drip down toward stick. Rotate pop as coating drips to achieve even coating and cover bare spots. Set in cake pop stand.

Add melted coating to pastry bag. Using coating like glue, squeeze a thin layer on top of cake pops and arrange candy corns to make flower petals. Squeeze more coating on middle of petals and top with M&Ms.

Makes 48 cake pops.

Per cake pop: 249 calories, 12 g total fat (6 g saturated), 7 mg cholesterol, 35 g carbohydrates, 115 mg sodium, trace dietary fiber.

Recipe from Celia Thompson, instructor at the Culinary Center of Kansas City in Overland Park, Kan.

Cake pops - dipped and decorated golf ball-size rounds of cake on a stick - are popping up at school functions and weddings, birthday parties and baby showers.

Cake pops are featured in books, classes and YouTube videos.

Even Starbucks sells them.

Blogger Angie Dudley of Atlanta, better known as Bakerella (bakerella.com), popularized cake pops. In her New York Times best-seller "Cake Pops: Tips, Tricks and Recipes for More Than 40 Irresistible Mini Treats," Bakerella explains how to craft cake pops that look like robots, puppies and ghosts.

The classic cake pop is a supersweet, mushy mouthful. It is made of crumbled cake and frosting creamed together, chilled and then dipped in melted candy coating and decorated.

Red Velvet Brownies with White Chocolate Buttercream

For the past three weeks I’ve been craving a yellow butter cake with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream frosting.  This post obviously isn’t about that cake.  It’s about these Red Velvet Brownies with White Chocolate Frosting that I nearly had to wipe the drool off of my keyboard from when I came across the recipe.  A chewy, dense, bright red (and in my opinion, all red velvet should be) brownie topped with a fluffy white chocolate buttercream frosting that actually tastes like the white chocolate I fell in love with as a child.  These are the type of brownies that will make your old Aunt Rhonda kick herself for not thinking to bring to the church picnic before her old rival, Harriett, did just that.  They’ll make people swoon and clamor over each other for seconds.  You’ll watch these babies disappear and will beam with delight.

I’ve only made one other red velvet recipe in my lifetime and I had forgotten about the destructive power of red food coloring so be prepared to go slowly when it comes time to add it in.  Fortunately, the recipe seems to compress the mess because you’ll stir together the cocoa powder, food coloring, and some vanilla into a paste that you’ll add to the batter rather than pouring all of the food coloring into a whirling mixer.  That’s a disaster waiting to happen.  The white chocolate frosting is insanely sweet and I almost thought it was too sweet but by the next day, the white chocolate flavor seemed to blossom and the sweetness had diminished just a tad.  Because of this, I highly recommend making the frosting a day or two in advance and sticking it in the fridge until you’re ready to bake the brownies; it will need to come to room temperature and will likely need a good stir before you’ll be able to frost.  Whatever you do though, don’t wait another millisecond to make these.   You’ll Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Butter and flour an 8″x8″ baking pan.