March Lions and Lambs

After several tries at copying the recipes out of my cupcake book, creativity has finally struck. I'd come across a neat blogger (http://bakerella.blogspot.com/) who had been creating something called "cake pops." Basically, cake pops are cake balls on sticks. Okay, what's a cake ball? Well, besides the source of many a sophomoric joke, cake balls are crumbled up cake mixed with frosting and dipped in candy melts. Bakerella decorates hers in all sorts of neat ways, so I decided to combine my enthusiasm for cupcake decorating with cake pops.

I made lions and lambs in honor of our lion-like entrance into March:

The best part about these is that the decorations are almost entirely of my own invention. I stole the lion's mane (which is my least favorite part, frankly) from the cupcake book, but everything else was my own. The lion's ears are created with chocolate chips stuck to the cake pop with frosting before dipping, and the pink insides are little hearts. The lamb's ears are Swedish fish stuck into the ball before dipping, with curled Twizzlers Pull-n-Peel for the inside of the ears. Noses are an M&M and half a Jelly Belly, respectively.

The rest of their faces are drawn on with my new toys: edible pens. I was stupidly excited about the idea of edible pen, but it practice, it didn't go so well. The candy started sweating fairly quickly and then the pens hardly worked. Next time I'll probably keep everything in the fridge while decorating.

They turned out pretty cute, and they were tasty, too. Hopefully none of my creations ever turn up on my other new favorite blog: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/