Jupiter Pops

This week I am going to Florida for the launch of Phil's project: JUNO

It is going to investigate Jupiter, how it formed, and what it's made of

and to celebrate I made some Jupiter Cake Pops to take along. Tomorrow I have to deal with getting them through airport security, and making sure they don't melt or crack or break in transit... But hopefully it will all be ok :) Here they are:

My kitchen lighting makes everything look more yellow...

For these guys I decided to go with chocolate cake & chocolate frosting, and as basic as that sounds... I had never tried it before! I started out as usual with a crumbled up cake, and threw in a few little spoonfuls of frosting. Online recipes will always tell you to use 3/4 to a whole can of frosting for one cake, but since I do my pops in batches of 12 and only use 1/4 of a cake at a time, I would rather add as I go. You can always add frosting, but it is hard to save over-moistened pops.

Then I mixed it all up and rolled out my little cake balls.

It was so hard not to start eating them at this point. They already look delicious!

Next, I melted down my Red Merckens candy melts and added some Cherry Oil-Based flavoring.

Just a teeny-tiny drop was enough to give the melts a strong Cherry flavor

You have to used oil-based because anything with water will make the chocolate seize up and then it's no good. But my melts were already no good. I guess they were too old or something because no matter how much oil I added they were still lumpy and gloppy and blegh. But I made it work I suppose.

Usually when I insert my sticks I just poke them into the top of the balls, leaving them on the tray. But I saw a tip on another blog that said to actually pick them up, and poke the stick into the flat part at what used to be the bottom of the ball.

It really did make them appear much rounder at the end!

Then comes the tricky part: Marbling. First you dip the cake pops in the red, and while they are still wet you have to add some of your second color on there. You can use a spoon, or double dip, or whatever you are most comfortable with. I choose to use a pastry bag because that's what I am used to. Then you tap it and swirl it to smooth out the surface and let the colors flow together. If you are using two very different colors you may want to tap the pops over a separate bowl, or at least try not to stir your melts a lot, because the colors will blend together in the pot and by the time you get to your last one, it will be a totally different color.

I tried to take a video of this process, but like I said - my melts were being extremely difficult. Normally it works out much nicer (and looks cooler too).

Please ignore the sounds of the Hangover... My mom was watching TV in the other room.

After that I just had to let them dry and they were all done. Last time I made them I added gold luster dust to give them more of a cosmic feel, but my luster dust has disappeared. And I don't know any baking supply stores that are open at midnight, so I had to call it quits. I am still happy with them though, and I can't wait to share them with my family at the launch!