Seven Up Cake Recipe

Cute, creative cake pop concoctions explode in popularity

1 boxed cake mix, baked

¾ can vanilla frosting

Disposable food preparation gloves

3 (1-lb.) packages white chocolate candy coating

1 package of 50 cake pop sticks

1 cake pop stand (available at craft stores)

1 pastry bag

Multicolored candy corn

1 small bag pastel-colored M&Ms

In a large bowl, break up cake into fine crumbs, eliminating chunks. Add frosting; cream together until mixture reaches a Play-Dohlike consistency.

Using your gloved hands, mold batter into small, cone-shaped balls. Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and cover with plastic wrap. Chill for 2 hours in refrigerator.

Melt candy coating, one package at a time, in microwave according to package directions. If coating is too thick, add 3 tablespoons shortening per package and reheat in microwave to achieve a thinner consistency.

Taking a few cake balls out of the refrigerator at a time, dip the end of an empty cake pop stick into melted coating, and then pierce the center of the narrowest end of cake ball, pushing no more than half way through.

Holding stick with pop facing down, dip pop into melted coating. Remove pop slowly and lift upward, allowing excess coating to drip down toward stick. Rotate pop as coating drips to achieve even coating and cover bare spots. Set in cake pop stand.

Add melted coating to pastry bag. Using coating like glue, squeeze a thin layer on top of cake pops and arrange candy corns to make flower petals. Squeeze more coating on middle of petals and top with M&Ms.

Makes 48 cake pops.

Per cake pop: 249 calories, 12 g total fat (6 g saturated), 7 mg cholesterol, 35 g carbohydrates, 115 mg sodium, trace dietary fiber.

Recipe from Celia Thompson, instructor at the Culinary Center of Kansas City in Overland Park, Kan.

Cake pops - dipped and decorated golf ball-size rounds of cake on a stick - are popping up at school functions and weddings, birthday parties and baby showers.

Cake pops are featured in books, classes and YouTube videos.

Even Starbucks sells them.

Blogger Angie Dudley of Atlanta, better known as Bakerella (bakerella.com), popularized cake pops. In her New York Times best-seller "Cake Pops: Tips, Tricks and Recipes for More Than 40 Irresistible Mini Treats," Bakerella explains how to craft cake pops that look like robots, puppies and ghosts.

The classic cake pop is a supersweet, mushy mouthful. It is made of crumbled cake and frosting creamed together, chilled and then dipped in melted candy coating and decorated.

be confectionate: Seven-up Cake, Chess Cake, and recipes involving ...

I am a bit sleepy this morning, as yesterday was a heck of a day.  Baking, baking, baking, and alas: more baking.  As soon as I am finished here, I get to fire up the oven again to do, well- you get it.  I enjoy it all, but as I listen to my nearly three year-old having a blast in the next room- I wish I could cozy up and watch him like a television.  It is really that exciting to be his mom right now.   When I was quite young, I remember pulling out cookbooks to see if we had all of the ingredients in the house to make- well, anything.  I remember baking a chocolate pound cake that my father said was "the best thing he had ever put in his mouth."  Thanks, dad.  I also remember circling recipes in the same cookbook later that evening to make for when I started my own bakery (in a addition to becoming a famous singer, Duke cheerleader, and Hallmark ornament designer). Then I went into a cooking hiatus, when I reduced my involvement in the kitchen to defrosting the meat for the Hamburger Helper.  In college I went on an entirely "fat-free" diet, and I did a lot of experimenting with fat-free cream cheese.  When I moved to Australia, my roommate and I tried countless times to create simple chocolate chip cookies without proper measuring cups. And finally, when I got married, I started watching the Food Network.  I watched Barefoot Contessa for Ina's sultry-voiced basics.  I watched Giada de Laurentiis for her creativity (how can I make this dish  Italian?).  Michael Chiarello brings high-brow sophistication in a backdrop of unparalleled beauty.  Paula Dean I watched for her gall (you are seriously covering that whole ham in puff pastry?).  All of these shows brought some token of knowledge that helped my develop kitchen skills, but none deserves credit above... Alton Brown. Now, I have a very close friend who really, would rather watch a Rachael Ray marathon than a half an hour of Good Eats.  No one person (sorry, Momma, not even you) has taught me more about food, and especially baking than Alton.  I love his mad-scientist demeanor, and it is no surprise to my husband that I regard him as... cute.  If there is ever a recipe I have in mind- some wild concoction of delicacies, I always look in his catalogue to see if he has done it first. Above is Alton Brown's  Cocoa Brownie  and his  Premium Vanilla Ice Cream .

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