cake pops

Ok, so remember that Book Fair book from my last post that my older ladybug came home with ... Cake Pops? The one I called too Martha for me? The one that required specialty ingredients that I've never even heard of? Well, of course, the little ladybug got to browsing over the weekend and decided that we needed to make Turkey cake pops for Thanksgiving:

Yeah right ... sure, kid. I tried desperately to dissuade her - I mean, just look at them ... we'd need to go to a William Sonoma to get the gourmet lollipop sticks, the special candies for the decorations, the edible markers ... I'd have to make fondant frosting for the first time, it was all too much, especially in the face of our actual Thanksgiving preparations. So she quickly redirected her attention to these:

She argued (correctly) that not only did these not call for fondant, but these could be easily modified with non-specialty ingredients ... furthermore, she claimed that Easter baskets would be a fun, colorful, and easy place to start. She's a girl that knows how to get what she wants for sure. So I sighed a big sigh and mentally cleared the next couple of hours in my day ... and we made Easter baskets on the weekend before Thanksgiving.

So here's how it all went down ... ladybug style. As opposed to Martha style. First we used a serrated knife (gentle back and forth "sawing") to cut the tips off of some sugar ice cream cones:

We set the "baskets" aside and started mixing a boxed cake mix:

When the cake was fresh out of the oven and still hot, we scooped out portions of hot cake and firmly packed the baskets full of cake:

While the cake-stuffed baskets were cooling, little bug and and I dyed some coconut flakes by shaking baggies of coconut shavings with just a few drops of food coloring:

We should have poked the "handles" into place during the cake-stuffing process - the cake had already set by the time we tried to poke in the handles and it made things difficult. Licorice would have also made a great handle (easier to poke into place too), but little ladybug insisted on gummy worm handles. At that point, all that was left to do was sprinkle on our coconut flakes and drop on the jelly bean "eggs":

And voila, our finished baskets ...

Little bug was right, the baskets were a very simple place to start - and a great way to ease into a cookbook with such high expectations ... and when we're ready to raise the bar, just look what lies ahead ...