How to make cake pops with ganache

Gather your stuff! You can get creative and use any flavour of cake.

Grab a large bowl and start to crumble your cake. You don't have to use a whole cake, just use what you have. You can use muffins, leftovers, whatever!

When the whole cake is uniformly crumbled set the bowl aside.

Now we begin making the ganache! If you don't want to make ganache you can use any kind of frosting and skip to Step 20. For a whole cake you will need about 2 cups of frosting.

Roughly chop up 8 ounces of the chocolate. (The smaller the pieces, the more surface area for the heat to get at, the faster the chocolate will melt.)

Melt the chocolate. I do this in a double boiler where you have a saucepan of boiling water underneath your pot of chocolate. This will ensure your chocolate won't burn.

Stir the chocolate every so often to make sure the bigger chunks melt evenly.

In the meantime heat up the cream and melt the butter. Microwaving is fine, you just dont want these to be cold because when you combine with the chocolate it will shock the chocolate and become hard.

Combine melted butter and hot cream.

When your chocolate is evenly melted...

Add the hot cream mixture to the chocolate and let sit for a few seconds without stirring - the idea is to let the ingredients all get acclimatized to each other and get to the same temperature.

Then stir very gently until combined. (You don't want to get air into the ganache because it's got to stay pretty rich and velvety.)

Keep stirring...

And stirring...

The more it sits the thicker the mixture will get. When it's nice and velvety like this you're done making the ganache!

Spoon the ganache into your crumbled cake bowl a little at a time. The amount of frosting you'll need depends on how moist or dry your crumble is.

When your cake mixture comes together in your fingers easily, stop adding the ganache/frosting.

Note: ganache can be used for many things. For example, if you whip it and put it in the fridge you'll have a delicious mousse!

So save your leftover ganache for another delicious dessert. :)

Bring the cake mixture together in your hands and roll into small balls. Place the balls fairly close together on a sheet of wax paper on a baking sheet.

When all the balls are rolled, place the tray in the freezer for an hour. This will set the cake balls so they're ready for the final step.

While the balls are freezing, melt the remaining 4 ounces of chocolate. This will be used for the final coat on the cake balls and should be in a pot that is deep enough to allow dipping.

Take the balls out of the freezer and, one at a time, dip a lollipop stick into the chocolate then into a cake ball. (the chocolate will act like glue and help the stick stay in the ball)

Like so! Now the cake pop is ready for the chocolate coating.

Stick the completed balls into a block of florist foam (or styrofoam) to allow the chocolate to dry. (If not serving immediately, refrigerate the cake pops so that they don't go all melty on you.)

Decorate and have fun with it! I've even tried these with sparklers instead of lollipop sticks and they turn out great!