Wednesday 16 December 2009

Snowball Cake Pops

vegan snowball cake popsVegan White Chocolate Coated and dipped in Coconut

vegan snowball cake popsDark Chocolate Coated and dipped in Coconut

vegan cake popsDark Chocolate Coated and dipped in nuts


The inside

How cute are those?!?!?!? Little rum soaked cake balls on a stick, coated in white or dark chocolate and rolled in coconut. Yum! These are another gem from the latest Canadian Living Holiday Baking magazine and as most of the UK is getting some snow today, thought it was a good time to blog them ;) I wanted to make them right away but wasn't sure what to do about the white chocolate. I love organica's vegan white bar but find you can't really bake with it as it melts into oblivion. Thankfully Steven over at Lustrous Musings had the great find of these new vegan white chocolate buttons - cheers! They melt beautifully and re-set really quickly making them perfect in these. Then, after buying out my local Tesco of all they had in them, I still ran out, so decided to coat some in dark chocolate and try different coatings. Here I just went with more coconut and some finely chopped pecans but the possibilities are endless!

Just a note on the cake, I decided to veganize the recipe from the magazine and got lazy and used egg replacers but really, I'm sure any cake recipe you like will work here. I'm kinda kicking myself for not making banana cake for these. Think about it - banana, rum and coconut - that would so work!

Furthermore, these are not just style over substance, they are seriously good!! We all love them and they are so Christmassy, not to mention fun to eat. Think I'll mess about making more food on sticks!

*Recipe says to use apple juice in place of the rum to make alcohol free*

Snowball Cake Pops: recipe says 36, I got about 28

100g / 1/2 cup vegan margarine
170g / 3/4 cup sugar, I used golden caster
40g egg replacer
1 tsp vanilla extract
210g / 1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
200 - 300ml rice milk
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80ml dark rum (I used Tesco's own label - it's on their vegan list and cheap ;)
vegan white and/or dark chocolate (sorry, didn't measure but you need a lot 350g?)
-desiccated coconut
-finely chopped nuts
-vegan sprinkles (if they exist!)

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Mix all flour, baking soda, powder and salt together in another bowl. Alternate the milk into the sugar mixture with the dry using 3 dry and 2 liquid until you get a floppy, almost pourable batter. Pour into a baking paper lined 8" square cake tin and bake in a 180C preheated oven for about 30 minutes. It should be golden, bouncy to the touch and a toothpick should come out clean. Leave to cool fully in the pan. I left mine overnight.

Trim the darkened edges off the cake. Eat them. Take the rest of the cake and crumble into a food processor. Drizzle with the rum and process until finely crumbed - it will come together a bit. Using 1 Tbsp at a time roll into a ball and place a popsicle stick inside (I got mine from Hobbycraft).


Place in the fridge to firm up - about 1/2 hour. Melt the chocolate you are going to use and dip the balls in, coating all over and place back on baking paper lined sheets
.

When all coated place back in the fridge to set, about 1/2 hour. Dip them again and immediately roll in whatever coating you like. Place back on the sheets and back in to the fridge for about 1 hour.

If you are giving these as gifts, which they would make super cute foodie gifts - tie a little bow around the stick and place some stryofoam into a gift box. You can then package them standing upright - too cute ;)

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!!



12 comments:

  1. Rum soaked cake on a stick? This sounds right up my street :D

    Beautiful photography as ever.

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  2. so pretty! and for sure vegan sprinkles exist - wilton's brand are good

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  3. Steven - thanks so much! I'm never confident about my photo taking, so it's nice to hear that from someone who takes amazing photos! Plus I don't think I ever cursed as much taking these. The Christmas tree has taken the place of where I normally put the tripod so I had to contort myself and the tripod (which is broken and I can't adjust the height of it) between the table and wall - then all the white balls kept coming out yellow or blurry! Honestly, out of near hundreds of pics those where the only ok ones!! sigh...I should really take a course...

    Philippa, thanks for the tip that the wilton ones are good. I actually just bought their edible glitters which *seemed* to be ok but never thought to look at their sprinkles!! Cheers!

    Thanks Zenzerino! :)

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  4. These are so sweet! I must look out for those white chocolate drops. In supermarkets, eh? Guess where I'm heading to tomorrow! Thanks for the clear, illustrated directions! :o)

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  5. Do you know that the singer John Mayer mentioned one of your cakes, or at least I think it's you he refers to ! Go check his blog. Basically he has this online competition where his fans send him cool photos of their cakes and he was telling them not to send him photos found on the web and then he mentioned a photo of a cake that looks like a giant hamburger!! I bet that's your birthday cake for your son. You're famous !!! :)

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  6. Thanks Penny! Yeah, found mine at Tesco, they are so good for baking!!

    Zenzorino - oh I would love to think he was talking about my veggie burger cake!! They are quite common online but I think I'll just imagine he was referring to mine there!!! Thanks again :)

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  7. I may have to bring these, despite it not being winter, to one of our vegan picnics this summer in Brighton. So cute to look at and I bet they taste awesome too!

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  8. I know what my family is getting for christmas ;) These look absolutely amazing!
    I wanted to ask you, I'm moving to Scotland from Canada and I was wondering about the vegan products for example at Tesco? Are they plenty or would you recommend another chain/store for vegan goodies, such as white chocolate and other baking stuff?

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  9. Thanks Annika!! I find Tesco has most things I need, their 'free from' section is particularly good. Besides them Sainsburys are great (they also do the white chocolate buttons, or at least my local does) but they also label their own name products vegan which is handy. Tesco also have great vegan treats in the kosher section - lovely cookies! :-)

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  10. Hi Debbie, What brand of white chocolate chips are these?

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  11. Hi! I used Humdinger brand Dairy Free White Buttons.

    http://veggies.co.uk/tag/vegan-white-chocolate-buttons/

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