Chocolate Amaretto Coconut Cake Pops

Well it has certainly been some time since I last posted (or baked).  A couple of months ago Binky, a fellow baker and blogger (Cakeb0t) was kind enough to give a copy of her wonderful cake pop course eBook to me (How to make Cake Pops by Cakeb0t).  I had never made cake pops before, but I was interested in making them.

I initially wanted to make pink heart shaped cake pops for Valentine's Day, but unfortunately, I did not have a chance to do that.  Binky recently posted a great video on how to make heart shaped cake pops (Kawaii Heart Tutorial).  I am definitely going to attempt making shaped cake pops in the future.  I finally got around to making my first batch of cake pops last week and ended up going with the standard round shape.

For these cake pops, I used Binky's recipe for yellow cake, but I replaced half of the butter with coconut oil and used a blend of milk and coconut milk instead of just cow's milk.  I wanted a yellow cake with a bit of coconut flavor.

 

The frosting that I mixed in was an amaretto butter cream.  Normally I make a fancy butter cream frosting for my cakes and cupcakes (my secret recipe for fluffy frosting), but with cake pops I did not need to worry about making the frosting light and fluffy.  It just needed to moisten the cake and form the cake pop.  I mixed together butter, confectioners' sugar, a generous splash or two of amaretto liqueur, and a few drops of almond extract.  

[A side note about amaretto:  not all amaretto is the same, the higher the alcohol content the better (Disaronno is best (28% abv) , E'Dolce (21% abv) is about 4x cheaper and will do just fine for baking).  The alcohol provides a nice warmth depth to these sweet treats.]

 

Once I had the cake pops formed, I dipped them in melted dark chocolate and then covered them in toasted coconut flakes.  One of the reasons I made these cake pops was so that I could try toasting coconut (two firsts in one). :-)  I originally planned to dip the pops and then place them into mini gold cupcake liners (an idea I got from Binky's book!).  My cake pops however, were too large for the liners, oops!  I made the cake pops the "right size" before dipping them in chocolate.  I used a thick dark chocolate too (instead of candy melts) and after coating them, they were too big for the liners (and too small for full cupcake liners, but that would have been funny).  I stumbled into a problem because I did not make a cake pop stand for them to dry on.  I ended up letting the chocolate harden with them upside down in the toasted coconut.  This allowed them to harden without sticking to anything and making more of a mess. :-)

 

Despite my small mishap with the size of them, they actually came out quite well and were super delicious!  Amaretto and chocolate has become one of my favorite flavor combinations and the addition of the toasted coconut was perfect!  The thick dark chocolate coating added a satisfying bite of chocolate to the cake and the toasted coconut provided some nice crunch.

If you are interested in making cake pops for the first time or getting new ideas for cake pops, please check out Binky's website:  http://www.cakeb0t.com/