Being the stubborn girl that I am, I needed to bake this week to redeem myself from the terrible Pinterest fail that was the confetti macaron massacre.
So being that Easter Sunday is this weekend and spring is here (hooray!), I thought I would do a recipe to celebrate the two occasions. My family is super addicted to anything cake pops or truffles. Trust me when I say we’ve tried every combination of these spherical suckers. From mint Oreos to carrot cake and even different flavored chocolate coatings, we’ve got a stock pile of cake pop and truffle recipes.
Last year, my sister and my mother killed it with this Spring Chickens Cake Pop Recipe from Bakerella. This year we wanted to up the ante, since we’re super competitive and extreme perfectionists (over the silliest things may I add.)
So we decided to loose the sticks and give these birds a home. A chocolate covered pretzel nest to be exact.
RECIPE: Spring Birds Cake Pops with Chocolate Covered Pretzel Nests and Easter Eggs
Ingredients for cake pops:
Funfetti cake mix (1 box)
Funfetti cake frosting (1 can)
Eggs
Vegetable oil
Water
Blue chocolate candy melts
Yellow chocolate candy melts
Dark cocoa chocolate candy melts
Color candy coated chocolate chips (say that ten times fast)
Ingredients for pretzel bird nests:
Sourdough thick pretzels
Dark cocoa chocolate candy melts
Cadbury candy coated chocolate mini eggs
Instructions:
1. Preheat oven. Mix box cake mix, eggs, vegetable oil, and water in a mixer as directed on the box instructions. Separate the batter into two 9″ pans equally. (TKO tip: I like to grease my pan first and dust with all purpose flour before adding the batter. It asks as a non stick layer, and can be used even if the pan is non stick, the cake lifts right out.) Bake the cakes according to box directions.
2. While you are waiting for the cake to bake, lay out wax or parchment paper onto two cookie sheets. Take all non broken sourdough pretzels and place on cookie sheet, leaving at least 1-2 inches between all pretzels.
3. Begin melting dark cocoa chocolate candy melts. This can be done a number of ways. My favorite method to melt chocolate is to use a microwaveable bowl and place in a microwave for 30 second intervals, making sure to stir in between every set so that the chocolate does not burn. Once the chocolate is melted, take a dinner fork and dip into the chocolate. Here comes the fun part: the Jackson Pollock method. I call it this because it literally mimics the same method of paint splattering that I used for the chocolate drizzling. Using quick motions of your hand or wrist, move back and forth over all the chocolate pretzels to get lines and lines of chocolate gathering on the top and sides of the pretzels. You want the nest to look twiggy and stick like so the more the better. You may also choose to dip the pretzels before drizzling for a base coat of chocolate to get full coverage. Let the pretzels now sit in the fridge.
3. Once the cakes are done let them cool for about 20 mins. Using a large bowl, place the entire can of frosting along with the cakes and begin to literally mush it all together with your hands. The mixture will form a soft and mushy dough.
4. Take small balls of the dough and roll into smooth balls. Place on second cookie sheet and freeze for at least 2 hours.
5. Melt the blue and yellow chocolate candy melts (in seperate bowls) and use this chocolate to dip each cake ball entirely. Tap the ball a few times before setting on baking sheet to make sure there is no excess chocolate. Freeze for 10 minutes.
6. Using a piping bag, melt dark cocoa and pipe small eye onto all cake balls. We found that less was more in this case. Use remaining blue and yellow chocolate to add the orange beaks (candy coated chocolate chips) to the chicks face. Allow to set.
7. Using the piping bag of dark cocoa, assemble the nest! We started with the chick cake pops first, adding chocolate to the bottom to stick to the pretzel nest, and then garnishing with the cadbury eggs. We switched up colors as well as egg placement to make them all unique and totally adorable!
We love these little guys wrapped in cello bags with some bakers twine! These are great to hand out as little Easter favors. They taste every bit amazing as they look!
So what do you think? Let me know if you are giving this a try, and email me the results TKOblog@gmail.com!
Happy Easter!
xoxo, TKO
