Love!

I am going to be a bridesmaid for my wonderful pledge sister and friend Gee this year!  I'm honored and excited to be part of her day and when I was asked to make cake pops and macarons for her bridal shower, of course I said yes!  My inner Amy Atlas was dying to come out :) 

Luckily for me, most of the orders I received these past few weeks centered around the same theme and allowed me to practice, and when I was invited to do a girly party I knew right away I wanted to do a mini dessert table based on weddings and looooooove <3

Mini dessert table with love themed pops, wedding pops and heart shaped macarons

I made my own cake stands using candle holders and plates from the Dollar Tree. For $2 a cakestand it worked great!  Google DIY cake stand for some great tutorials.  I'm still searching a white candle holder.  Let me know if you see one for $1!

I've always wanted to make heart shaped macarons when I saw them on this blog.  This was my first attempt making heart shaped macarons, and I baked them the morning of the event.  I said many prayers to the domestic goddesses before I put them in the oven.  They must have heard my prayers because they came out perfect!  My hearts had feet!  And they had a great texture to them.  Only a few cracked, but I'm always breaking hearts :P  They're also the best to do taste tests on, so you can save the best for your family, friends and customers.

Heart shaped almond macarons with raspberry filling

I have been told macarons are meant to be eaten delicately, with little bites and savored.  When I found out the cost of each one at my local bakery I understood why.  In a later post, I'll blog about my process along with a link to the template I made. 

I'm a big chocoholic, so these were my favorite in taste and looks.  The red and white just really pop against the dark chocolate candy melts.

Chocolate cake pops dipped in dark chocolate candy melts with white non pareil sprinkles and jumbo heart sprinkles

  

When I think of love, I think Valentine's day, red, pink and RED VELVET CAKE! These were popular at the party.  I wish I had a picture of a bitten pop, the red velvet cake against the pink was so pretty. 

  

Red Velvet cake pops with pink vanilla candy and sprinkled with red non pareil sprinkles

Call me traditional but I love white wedding cakes!  I usually use Wilton candy melts because they're inexpensive and I can always find them at my local craft store.  For my wedding cake pops I wanted the cakes to be super white, so I bought a few bags of Guittard candy melts from Classic Cake.  OMG! BEST. THING. EVER!!  The quality is ubeatable compared to other candy melts. 

Look how white and shiny they look!

White wedding cupcake and wedding cake pops with red jumbo hearts

I used lemon cake to make the wedding pops.  I like to use a light colored cake when dipping in light colors. 



Wedding Cake pops with pink, red and white jumbo heart sprinkles

For the girly party, I also made 3 dozen Oreo (and a few lemon) cupcake pops as favors.  

 

Tagged, bagged and tied

Here's another example at how great Guittard is. 

Lemon cupcake pop

 

Oreop cupcake pop

Usually when dipping Oreo pops in white, you can see the black Oreo through the white candy melts.  Guittard candy melts covered it up really well.  Can you see the difference?  If no, that's a good sign! 

I'm going to take a cake pop hiatus to work on some other projects I have.  Also, cake popping in this heat has not been fun.   I'll be taking orders again in October :D