Guilty as charged.

I've been bad. I've baked without blogging. I promise to catch up, starting now! I wish I had an excuse- I especially wish that I'd been too busy to blog because I've been feeling so great and my dysautonomia spontaneously cured, but that would be a lie. I've been feeling... normal. I have, however, spent some quality time with my mixer lately... including, but not limited to, cake pops.

It was my first time making cake pops, and if I have anything to say about it, it'll be my last. I used boxed cake mix because I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, and I knew the process would be labor intensive. (Labor intensive? More like working in a Chinese sweat shop!) If you've never heard of cake pops, it's a combination of cake and frosting, molded into a ball, stuck on a lollipop stick, and covered in candy coating. Much more fun to eat than to make! Here's some pictures:

The stick is dipped into the candy coating,

then it's frozen to get nice and firm for dipping!

This is what the finished product looks like!

I know they don't look so evil. They look cute and delicious. Here's the clincher: the candy coating- it's impossible to work with. Maybe I need some more practice, maybe I won't bother trying. It stays the perfect consistency for no more than 90 seconds, then it gets too hard or too thick to coat. So, you've got to keep putting it in the microwave, taking it out, dipping a few, repeat. That's not fun. But, WAIT! There's MORE! The freakin' pops don't stay frozen long enough to keep them intact through the whole microwaving torture process. So, the candy coating gets too hard, the pops get too soft, and remedying all of this requires lots of standing and walking and sitting and running and all sorts of other activities that aren't always possible with dysautonomia. Final verdict? I'll stick to cupcakes. Unless you're willing to pay a lot, a lot, to make me make cake pops again.