Raw Vegan Cake Pops

Birthday goodies!

OK, this recipe was NOT as easy as I thought it would be. However, now that I've made all the mistakes, I think the next time I try this recipe, it will be much easier.

When I came across these, I thought, "Oh, cake pops! How cute! That will be the perfect (allergy-friendly) birthday treat. How hard can it be? Make some raw balls, put 'em on a stick, dip in raw white chocolate coating, and freeze." Voila!

Ha!

Ha!

Ha!

Not so fast, Ms. Oh-So-Confident. My "easy" recipe took me most of the afternoon. So long, in fact, that we almost didn't get dinner, because I was still fooling with the cake pops! But, dear reader, you get to benefit from my mistakes- or at least have a better idea of what you may be getting yourself into ;)

Actually, it's not that they were that difficult- but perhaps (definitely) I tried to take on too much at once in this project. Heh.

First, let me give credit to this post, which was the inspiration for this project. I got all sorts of great ideas from the 12 entries listed, and used those recipes as a starting point. I made adjustments for personal taste preferences and dietary restrictions. Check out the original post above for ideas and inspiration for your own raw vegan cake pops! Also, the winners of the cake pop challenge and more tips can be found here (which I didn't discover until after I'd made mine, of course!)

I decided to make two flavors of cake pops. In retrospect, perhaps I should have started with one recipe until I got the hang of it, and then made adjustments and tried new flavors. But -obviously- that's not how I do things... heh heh.

I decided to make:
Cherry-vanilla cake pops, using a cashew base, and
Key Lime-white chocolate cake pops , using a macadamia base.

I will post each recipe in its own post to follow.

The preparation is worth noting here. I decided to make a white chocolate coating (again, making things more difficult than they needed to be, ha). But I LOVE white chocolate and have just been waiting for a reason to finally make a raw version. Did I have a recipe? No. But I'd seen one online... somewhere... Did I think it was going to be simple? Naively, yes :) Uh, what was I thinking???

Note: Raw white chocolate requires raw cacao butter, which is not a common ingredient, even in health food stores. I know of one store in this area that carries it, and that is a great little health food store across the river. So, I spent one day going (over the river and through the woods- er, palm trees) to the health food store to get the raw cacao butter (you can also order it online from various raw food vendors).

Next, you will need lollipop sticks. I found mine at Michael's craft store. I tried a couple of other kitchen stores and no luck. You might want to call around first to find the lollipop sticks. They're not expensive or hard to find, you just have to locate a store that has candy making supplies. Of course, if you're actually planning ahead, there is always Amazon.com

And then you have to make sure you have the other ingredients- nuts, vanilla, etc. Plus whatever fresh or dried fruits you might want to put in your cake pops. All of the ingredients can be found online or in your local health food store, but just a heads up that this recipe takes a little bit of planning.

I will post the actual recipes in the next two posts, but in the meantime, just for fun, if you would like to oooh and aaah over some adorably cute real cake pops- here is the gal that started it all: Bakerella