Tempting Tuesdays ~ Sweet Chocolate Cherry Bombs

Valentine's Day is just a few days away and I wanted to give you a special recipe. I searched through dozens of tempting treats, but this was the one I always kept coming back to. I had never made cake pops before. I just didn't understand how you could actually get cake on the end of a stick. This seemed like an easy alternative.

This recipe is adapted from Hungry Happenings.

Ingredients

1 Devil's Food or Chocolate Cake Mix
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1/4 cup - 1 tub Classic White Frosting
30-48 Maraschino Cherries with stems
16-22 oz. tempered semi-sweet chocolate (or
  dark confectionery coating/candy melts)

First we need to bake our cake. Instead of following the directions on the box, combine your cake mix with water, vegetable oil, and eggs until smooth.


Heat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare you pan. Use two round cake pans or one 9 x 13 inch pan.

Tip:

To grease your pan, combine two tablespoons each of all purpose flour, vegetable oil, and Crisco. Mix together until you make a paste then coat the bottom and the sides of your pan. The cake will slide right out of your pan. No more problems with sticking and losing clumps of cake!

Pour cake mix into pan(s). Tap gently on the sides to get all the air bubbles out. Bake 29-35 minutes (check package for specific cooking time for pan size.)

Cool cake completely.

Crumble cake and add frosting. This part is where you use your own judgement. Some people use the whole tub, while I only used about half a tub. It's up to you how dense or fluffy you would like your cake to be.

Form a disk out of cake mixture, place cherry in the middle, then form cake around the cherry until completely covered.

Melt your chocolate in the microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring between each. If you can find cherries with stems, just hold by the stem and dip into the chocolate until coated. Unfortunately, after an exhaustive search I still couldn't find Maraschino Cherries with stems. If this is how you find yourself, just roll each ball in melted chocolate with a spoon until completely covered. Place on a baking sheet covered in wax paper then pop in the freezer for 5 minutes to set up.

Mine turned out a little on the big side, so I only got 24 out of this recipe. I'm sure if I made them half the size, I could easily get twice that many. Big plus, my sweetie loved them and is already asking about making them again. You can use chocolate cake with chocolate frosting or white or yellow cake with white frosting. Sweetie suggested chocolate cake, chocolate frosting with pineapple chunks inside. That might be the next treat I make in our household.

Have a SWEET Valentine's Day!