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Tutorial

Weekend baking- Oreo Wonderfuls

“What shall I call those things I just made?” I asked my husband. “Oreo Wonderfuls” said he. Ok then. Since I can’t think of anything to call them, Oreo Wonderfuls it is.

I started thinking about making these after watching Lorraine Pascale make her cheaty cake pops, where she combined Oreos and chocolate spread. After a quick browse on the internet, I found lots of similar “recipes” that used cream cheese instead of the chocolate spread. This seemed like a far better idea, as we use the light version cream cheese in our house and can thus pretend that these aren’t actually that bad for you.

Basically, all you need is:

  • Oreo cookies
  • Cream cheese
  • Chocolate

And you’re good to go. You’ll need roughly twice the weight of Oreos as you do cream cheese. I used 8 oz Oreos and 4 oz cream cheese, which made 20 bite sized balls.

Ready? Go:

Put your Oreos in a food processor, blender, or bag if you don’t have either of those. It helps if you take the cookies apart first. Pulse (or bash with a rolling-pin, if you have them in a bag!) until you have fine crumbs.

And the cream cheese and blend together until you have a nice even gooey lump of deliciousness.

Put a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray or similar. Roll the mixture into little balls the size of your choosing and place them on the tray, then pop this in the freezer for a while to firm up.

While they’re in there, you can start melting your chocolate- I find it easiest to do in the microwave, but a double-boiler works too of course. You need to get it as runny as you can, but keep heating in small amounts and stirring, so you don’t over heat the chocolate.

Once it’s ready, you can start dipping! I just used a spoon and dropped the cookie ball into the chocolate, rolled it a bit then took it out- they’ll need to go back on the baking paper covered tray, by the way, so keep it handy.

When they’re all coated, you’ll need to stick them in the fridge for a while to set. If you’re feeling fancy, once they’ve been dipped you can cover them in nuts/sprinkles etc. to make them look even more exciting. Personally, I quite like the rough-coating look, so I left mine be:

These are so easy and so delicious, I think I’ll be making them quite a lot.

Categories
General

CAKE POPS

I made 40 cake pops, they lasted  just 11 hours when shared with work colleagues and friends.  Apparently once you eat one, you just can’t stop.  Here is how it all happened.

It all starts with the very normal baking a cake…

Make a basic chocolate cake recipe.  I made mine by mixing 250g salted butter (at room temperature) with 250g caster sugar.  Slowly add 4 medium eggs, continuing to beat the mixture.  Sift over 250g self-raising flour and 4 tablespoons of cocoa powder.  Mix everything until combined.  Pour into 2 x 8 inch cake tins, bake in a preheated oven at 160ºC for 25 mins.  Test it with a skewer, it cooked the skewer comes out clean.  Leave the cake to cool.

Now things start to get a bit crazy, it’s time to destroy the cake, yes, really…

I know it seems so terribly wrong, but it has to be done.  Put the cake into a food processor and process until you get a crumb consistency.  I do not have a food processor, so I had to go with the slower method of breaking the cake until a big bowl, and then using a fork to break it up into a crumb-like consistency.  Yes, this takes quite a bit more time, but if you do it whilst sitting in front of the TV watching ‘The Big Bang Theory’ then the time passes by quickly.

In a seperate bowl mix together 140g full-fat cream cheese and 280g sifted icing sugar until smooth.  Add this to your cake crumbs.  Stick your hands in and combine together.  You should be left with a moist mixture. 

Time to make some balls…

Weigh out 30grams of the mix and roll into a ball, push in a lollipop stick, and place on a tray.  Do this about 39 more times and you should have used up all your mix.  Put the tray into the fridge for a few hours (if short on time you can put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes).

Now for the fun part, it is time to decorate…

Melt some chocolate or candy melts, I used Cadbury milk chocolate as it is my favourite.  Dip the naked cake pop into the chocolate, ensure it is fully coated, tap the excess chocolate off.  Decorate with sprinkles, glitter, sugar stars/hearts etc, whatever you fancy.  Place into a stand to dry.  You can buy proper cake pop stands online, but they can be a bit pricey.  I used oasis (the stuff that is used for flower arranging) and found it was a very useful substitute.

And the result is…

A very pretty, cute and tasty treat, something that is almost like a chocolate truffle.  Seriously, they were eaten so quickly by my work colleagues and friends that I did not even have time to eat one myself, I found myself making another batch a few days later, and I got to eat my first cake pop, and it was delicious, worth the time and effort for a special occasion/treat.