It was my dad’s birthday last month. I’m not quite sure now where the nick name originated from but I call my dad ‘The Poopah’ and mum is ‘The Moomah’!

Anyway, my dad has always worn glasses and has always had a moustache (except for a small interlude where his face was bare for a couple of months and he had a full beard for a couple of months – both of which The Moomah hated and he went back to being moustacheo man!) So it’s quite easy to get his character with just a few cake decorating touches.

My dad’s birthday is always celebrated with a family gathering in his garden- usually a BBQ, but what with the summer we’ve been having it was an indoor event this year!  My aunt was visiting from Israel and my 93 year old grandma came too, so I offered to make a cake. Mum always does the decorated cakes for family so I  made some cake pops instead.

How to make the cake pops

1. I keep larger off cuts from cakes I’ve made and had to chop up (or level the top) and freeze them just for making cake pops with. I hate to waste food. ESPECIALLY cake!

2. Pop the cake in a food processor and whizz it till it’s crumbs. I used the off cuts from a ONE bowl chocolate cake

3. Add buttercream and whizz again. I don’t measure anymore I just add the buttercream until it sticks together. (To make the buttercream use  a 1:2 ratio  i.e 50g butter, 100g icing sugar, and a drop of vanilla essence all blended together until nice and fluffy)

4. Roll into balls and pop into the freezer for 5 minutes to harden.

5.Mix up some royal icing and colour it using colouring pastes. Add just a tiny bit at a time. Use a toothpick for the ultimate in colour control.

6.Place the royal icing in an icing bag. I printed out a load of pictures of glasses and moustache onto a piece of A4 paper and placed the sheet inside a new, clear, plastic pocket – the kind you would use in a ring binder. Wipe it with Trex so that it isn’t too sticky then ice the shapes over the top of the print out.

7.Leave them to harden up. I would usually leave them over night but you can leave them for a few hours. Test a corner to see if they are going to be strong enough to handle. Remove them with a thin pallet knife VERY CAREFULLY. I broke so many of these that most of the cake pops had smarties all over them (as Beau was helping me!)

8.Push the sticks into the cake pops and dip into the melted candy melts. I thought I had some pink melts when I started making these but when I pulled the lock and lock box out of the cupboard it would appear that it was just pink packaging! It turned out that they were all chocolate. Oh well never mind! I melted some white chocolate to put on the top of each cake pop instead. While they were still wet I added the glasses and moustache decorations onto the top of the pops so when you looked in the box you could see the Poopahs looking out!

So, what do you think? Do they look like my dad then?

There was a bit of a Poopah theme running throughout the afternoon. None of us kids or mum discussed what we were doing/ baking with each other for the lunch. My mum made a cake of his face complete with glasses and tash and mmmm nice chocolate hair and a nose made out of marzipan. Always our favorite bit! When we were kids we used to fight over who got the most marzipan.

Even my 2 1/2 year old niece Sara got in on the action. How cute is the card she made?

Have you made any personalised cake pops recently? I’d love to know how you got on!

EmmaMT

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