Holiday Pops, Round 2: The Candy Cane Effect

The next idea for Holiday gifts that I wanted to try out was a set of pops with nothing but white and shades of red, again with lots of sparkle, shine, and swirl, as was the plan with the blue and white frosted pops, in an attempt to create an impression of elegance .

Seems that with every experimental batch, there's some unforeseen "disaster." With this round, ONE of the disasters was that the filling was too dry, resulting in uneven surfaces and lots of cake plops into the candy coating.  UGH!

I had detoured into experimenting with rice krispy treats bases for the previous 2 batches or so, using the rice krispy treats to make the balls as well, so I had not yet gotten a good sense of the right balance of cake to frosting for achieving a ball that will dip well, while not being too dry nor too mushy. I was also still struggling with keeping the coating properly "tempered" (a term I have since learned from my culinary-trained son ;-), as well as with piping and sprinkling techniques. Here's a "taste" of the many failed pops...

Another disappointment was the shade of red. I couldn't seem to get it right with the candy coloring I was using.  (NOTE TO SELF: Buy the colored candy wafers next time. They cost the same as the white ones!)

Nonetheless, I did get some that I was more or less pleased with, and used those to play around with presentation and packaging for Christmas gifts. "Voici les resultats..."

I have found that with pretty much every "flop" so far, there has also come some sort of unexpected inspiration or learning. For this batch, it was the failed attempt to achieve the deep Christmas-red color I desired that inspired me to make breast cancer awareness pops someday. And I will! I have already started collecting trinkets, ribbons, stickers, etc with which to adorn the pops/displays. Maybe they could be auctioned, with the proceeds going to breast cancer research?  We'll see...

Coming up next... Holiday Pops, Round 3: Fun and Fancy