Secret Centre Cake Pops

Last week I was chatting to a friend who was battling to find an important email she had been drafting on her iPad. The final conclusion was that it was probably irretrievably lost. I was feeling bad for her, and at the same time quite relieved that it wasn't me (sorry, Lauren!). Little did I know that at the exact time we were having this electronic conversation, my iPad was downloading the latest software and systematically deleting all the photos and recipes that I had accumulated, albumned and archived over the past 9 months. Grrrr!!
I was using an app called Photo Manager Pro, which had a great filing system. But no back-up. I'm quite technologically naive, so I didn't ever consider doing a manual back-up. And the software upgrade deleted the entire app - photos, recipes, tutorials, everything - including the app itself, off the iPad. Grrr grr!!

So, I was feeling a little gut-punched last week: in need of some serious chocolate solace.
Chocolate cupcakes, chocolate cake pops and chocolate macarons. (The latter didn't turn out looking much like macarons, more like chewy choc biscuits. But they were good enough to be eaten!)

And I decided to be a little decadent with the cake pops: rich chocolate cake with creamy caramel secret centres.

I will share the chocolate cake, and creamy caramel icing recipes with you shortly, but for now - just a quick how-to for the cake pop secret centre:

First, take 1/2tsp-fuls of caramel, and place on a baking tray; put this in the freezer for an hour, or until solid. (This just makes the blob of caramel much easier to work with.)

Use a basic Cake pop recipe  , scoop up your cake pop mix and make a small well.
Put the blob/ nugget of caramel in the well, then compact the cake pop mix around it.

If the caramel starts getting too soft to work with, then just re-freeze.

Put the cake balls in the freezer for 15minutes, then continue with the rest of the cake pop assembly as normal.

Chocolate makes the world a sweeter place : )

xxM