Cooking up deliciousness

A few weeks ago I made cake pops for a friends baby shower. The theme was "She's ready to pop!". We had cake pops, popcorn, fruit pops, and soda pop. I forgot to take a picture of the refreshment table, so this cake pop shot will have to do. They were so cute with the pink insides, because my friend is having a girl.

Pink Cake Pops:

1 strawberry cake (cooked)

1/3 can cream cheese frosting

1 bag chocolate morsels

sucker sticks

 After the cake is baked and cooled crumble it in your hands. Add cream cheese frosting and mush into a cake dough. Shape and roll cake dough into balls. I usually freeze the cake dough balls for about an hour to help them stay together. Melt chocolate in a cup or bowl until thin and runny. Dip the tip of a sucker stick in the chocolate then stab it into a cake dough ball. Let dry then dip the whole cake ball on the stick into the chocolate. I stab holes into a cereal box and jab the sticks into the box to let the cake pops dry.

 I drizzled these ones with pink white chocolate. The strawberry cake made them really cute but also really sweet. I have made these a few times and my favorite kind are red velvet with white chocolate. Cake pops are so yummy and super cute for parties!

Also this week I made Homemade Ice Cream and Caramel Corn. 

The ice cream I did not want to used a recipe that had eggs in it so I searched and found this one and it was good! 

Homemade Ice Cream (no eggs):

2 cans sweetened condensed milk

1 package (1oz.) instant vanilla pudding

1 T. vanilla extract

1/2 gallon whole milk

Rock salt

Ice

Combined sweetened condensed milk, dry pudding mix, and vanilla. (I mix it all together in the ice cream maker can.) Slowly add whole milk until it reaches the fill line in the ice cream maker can. Mix well with a spoon to ensure the sweetened condensed milk is not just stuck at the bottom of the can. Mix in ice cream maker for 40-60 min. You can freeze it for up to a week. Cover with saran wrap or wax paper directly on ice cream in a tupperware to prevent ice crystals. 

I used cheesecake pudding, it was really sweet. My dad gave me an ice cream maker for my birthday. It is such a fun gift and I can't wait to try different flavors of ice cream.

Now for the caramel corn. I also got an air pop popcorn maker for my birthday from my sis-in-law, spoiled I know :). I wanted to try this present out this weekend too. If you can't tell I have a sweet tooth and didn't just want to just make buttered popcorn. I really wanted caramel corn and my mom has a really good recipe but it calls for karo syrup and I didn't have any. Oh, well I will just make caramel without the karo syrup. Guess what? It worked!

Caramel Corn

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 cup popcorn seeds

Melt butter in sauce pan on medium heat. Add brown sugar and cook until smooth. Slowly add sweetened condensed milk. Continue to cook on medium heat (soft boil) until caramel is at the "soft ball" stage. (You can test for soft ball stage by dripping some caramel into a cold glass of water. When it forms a soft caramel ball then you know the caramel has been cooking long enough.) Remove from heat. Pop the popcorn seeds in an air popper. Drizzle and stir caramel over popcorn. Let cool and then devour!

We had ice cream sundaes the night before I made the popcorn. So I tossed some leftover toppings (nuts, m&m's) into the caramel corn.