Baking with Ro: BB-8 Cake Pops

"I fail, so you don't have to!"
 

Welcome to the start of a new series on my blog, Baking with Ro!
My amazing brother bought me Nerdy Nummies, by Rosanna Pansino for Christmas and I knew right away that I wanted to try these recipes out and show you guys my progress. In this series, I will be showing you my favorite creations that Ro has done, and give you any extra tips and tricks that I learn while making them. Think of these posts as a companion to her videos!

When this video for BB-8 cake pops popped up in my YouTube subscription box, I got really excited and knew that I had to make them. I'm a big Star Wars geek, if you didn't know by now! Who else enjoyed The Force Awakens?

Rosanna gives you all the ingredients and method in her video below!

My experience baking these cake pops:

The number one lesson I have learned in my time baking, is that the recipe never turns out perfectly the first time. I always have to have a couple goes to get it right, and this was certainly the case with these. 

First of all, Pound Cake hates me. I don't know what I did to offend it, but it refused to co-operate. I did get confused with the change in measurements between the US system and ours, so cake no. 1 didn't make it. Cake no. 2 was far more promising and worked out (thank the baking gods!)

Crumble the cake and add icing to bind it

To be honest with you, I had my fair share of disasters making these. After I rolled out my balls the first time, they were too big. I put too much oil in my white chocolate, so I had to dip the pops in about three times each to make them solid white. My makeshift stand wasn't the best idea after all, because they kept falling over. And my royal icing went thin, so I had to take all three bags out and make them thicker. BUT baking is all about learning how to handle things when they go wrong, and to be honest, it really helped me test my patience (I very nearly gave up and threw them all in the bin.) Just breathe, have a break, and come back to it with a clear mind.

My tips and tricks:

Allow a decent amount of time to make these (It took me about 6 hours in all.) You really don't want to rush them either, so make sure to have the day free. 

I didn't have any Styrofoam (who has it lying around when you need it?) so I just made holes in an upside down egg carton to hold my sticks. It is a bit finicky, so beware that it can and will annoy you.

You only need to roll a tablespoon of the mixture, or they will be too heavy for the sticks.

It's a good idea to put the pops back into the fridge after you have put the melted candy/chocolate on  the stick (before you dip the whole thing in.) Mine kept falling off otherwise.

If you can't find candies for the BB-8 heads, I just made them using white fondant. Roll pieces into a ball then cut them in half. Worked like a charm.

Make sure you have a few extra cake pops just in case some don't work out. Only nine out of fifteen made it for me...RIP

The final result!

 So, what do you think? Definitely not perfect, but there was fun to be had while making them. This quickly turned into one of those projects that is hard at the time, but once you're done you're really glad you did it. Look how cute they are! 

I hope you can learn from the mistakes I made and have fun baking these cuties! Did I mention they taste amazing too? All credit goes to Rosanna and her amazing team, so make sure you go watch her video. She sure does make everything look easy, but I'm excited to try out more of her recipes soon.

Steph x.