cake pops

I ventured into a new recipe world recently and it was so bizarre. seriously cake pops? they're the strangest thing!

so here's the deal: my sister gave me some of the teflon ice cube trays for my birthday; one shaped as butterflies and one as music notes.

I can eat cake mix, I just have to make sure to add egg whites or egg substitute instead of straight eggs. And luckily, this recipe called for one egg, instead of three (which is a complete no-no even with the egg substitute). but i know these are very popular right now and thought i would try them.

first off, they're TONS of work! and take TONS of time! I don't know if anyone else around here has made them, but let's recap. you bake it like a cake, then crumble it (but you have to let it cool first), press it in the shapes, add the stick, and freeze/refrigerate it. if you're lucky, they look like they're supposed to:

I won't get into the difficulty in pressing them into the shapes. I got the butterflies down, obviously, but the stems of the music notes? forget it! and even the butterfly's wings look a little rough around the edges.

so after you refrigerate them, you take them out and melt some chocolate down and dip them in that. so then the butterfly shape would be obscured, so what's really the point? And since this is funfetti, you cover them in sprinkles too. but you have to have a styrofoam board to stick the pop in so it can set.

I will say, they're handy. it's cute. but holy cow. can you imagine that these are probably the new thing to take to your kid's classroom for their birthday? cupcakes were bad enough (my mom complained doubly because she has twins!) but these things are even more extravagant.

i probably should have just settled and eaten regular cake for celebration, instead of trying the cake pops. but this is one of things we can all blame pinterest for...pinterest is great, but cake pops are hard.

that was my adventure into new recipes this last month and it was obviously not a success! (and on the allergy front, either the egg whites weren't separated well enough or something because i still ended up getting sick from them) I'm going to have to stick to using my ice cube trays for ice cubes from now on, not cake pops.