Kids just love these bite-sized, chocolate smothered balls of delicious, moist cake. And they’re even more fun at Halloween as one-eyed monsters! You can add any designs or colours to them and even let the kids get involved in the creations.

Here’s what goes in

• 1 vanilla sponge cake (which you can bake or buy)
• Cake pop sticks or skewers

For the butter icing:

• 100g of butter, softened
• 250g of icing sugar
• 25ml of milk
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

For the chocolate candy coating:

• 200g white melting chocolate, chocolate discs or “Candy Melts” (or white chocolate)
• Half a teaspoons of white vegetable fat
• Powdered food colouring

How to do it

Make a batch of butter icing by creaming softened butter with a hand-held blender until it’s smooth and creamy. Start adding the icing sugar in small amounts, along with the milk and vanilla essence, mixing in between, until it’s all blended in.

Combine the icing with the crumbed cake and roll the cake mixture into small balls in using the palm of your hands. Insert the sticks, place these on a greased tray and pop them into the freezer, preferably overnight. Freezing helps to firm up the cake pops which makes them much easier to work with.

When you’re ready to decorate them, melt the chocolate in a double boiler – which could be a heatproof bowl placed over a pot of shallow boiling water – ensuring that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water. Stir frequently to ensure that the chocolate is melting evenly, and when you have a few small chunks left, remove this from the heat completely as residual heat will continue to melt the rest. Stir in the vegetable fat. At this point, add the colouring if you’re going to use any. Allow the chocolate to cool off slightly, for about 5 minutes, before you begin to coat the cake pops.

Take your cake pops out of the freezer and then, one by one, spoon melted chocolate over them, twisting and turning the cake pop as you go to ensure an even coating. The vegetable fat contributes to a smooth finish and hardens up nicely, and while this is of great benefit, you need to act quickly if you’re going to add any decorations to the cake pop. You want them to stick before the chocolate hardens. Decorate your cake pops as desired and stand them up to dry by sticking them into a block of florists’ foam (oasis) or a polystyrene block.

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