.strawllipop.

my mom would pull through the line at the bank and i'd sit on pins and needles in the backseat, hoping to get a lollipop from the smiling teller. most of the time my hoping panned out and i'd be one happy little girl with a colorful, sugary treat in hand. some things never change and as an adult, i still feel a little giddy when i get a special little delight out of nowhere.

for my recent wedding, my cousin and friend, tammy, made all of the delectables for our sweet's table. one of her specialities is her bite-sized, spherical gobblets of yumminess. i call them her cake balls. i know, i know...not the most appetizing nickname. although she makes all kinds of delicious flavors, we stuck to classic vanillas and chocolates for our blissful affair. just like those suckers from my childhood, she placed a lollipop stick in each making them both adorable and functional to pick up and eat.

when embarking on my baking lifestyle last weekend, i made way too much strawberry frosting for my cake. that left me with a delicious dilemma- what to do with all that icing! not to mention, i lost one of my three strawberry cake rounds the night before. however, i saved the crumbled mess because i just couldn't bear to throw out one-third of my hard work. so here i was on saturday morning with a tupperware filled with cake crumbles and another filled with pink and red speckled frosting.

voila!

it hits me like a ball to the side of the head (which did happen last year at one my husband's dodgeball games)- i'll make cake balls! i'd read online that cake balls were basically formed by combining processed, super crumbly cake with frosting. the ratios i found on several websites had a much larger cake to frosting scale. rather than stick to conventional baking wisdom, i decided to add quite a bit more frosting because in my case, it was way more appetizing than my cake itself was. i figured that would make the finished product taste better. after kneading the mix together of the two and then forming them into small spheres, i sent them to the freezer to stiffen.

in the meantime, i melted white candy coating with a little swirl of pink food coloring for the sake of pretty. after the cake balls hardened, i began the dipping process. this part proved a little harder than i had imagined and i had to pull out and put on my patience pants. by inserting a lollipop stick into each one, i knew it was only right to stop calling them cake balls and to begin calling them by a much sweeter name- cake pops.

just like when i was a little girl with a lollipop in hand, these little cuties made me grin all over before even biting into them. they were well received at home, at a friend's party and with my lunch bunch at work. they are this grown-up girl's prized treat.