My Birthday Cake Pops

Gather supplies: chocolate cake mix, chocolate frosting, almond bark, sprinkles, sliced almonds

Bake cake and let it cool.

Let your kids loose smashing up the cake and mixing most of the can of frosting in it.  Then shape the mixture into balls.

Lick the deliciousness off your hands.

Put the cake balls in the freezer for about 15 minutes while you clean all the chocolate off the floor.  Melt the almond bark. 

Dip the stick in the melted almond bark and then insert it in the cake ball.  Dip the cake ball into the almond bark to coat completely.  Decorate with sprinkles and sliced almonds.

Enjoy your "bird" cake pops!

I thought of all these bird-themed ideas for my own birthday party.  In addition to bird cake pops, I was going to make spaghetti "nests" with meatballs "bird eggs" for dinner.  I was going to decorate with bird nests, bird cages, bird houses, eggs, twigs, etc.  But in the end I decided that it would be more relaxing to order Chinese take-out and let the kids have fun with the cake pops.  It might not be a perfectly styled bird-theme party, but we enjoyed ourselves!  And then we had family game night and the kids beat the parents.

Valentine Shortbread Cookies

About 10 years ago, this recipe for shortbread cookies with white chocolate frosting appeared in Martha Stewart Living magazine.  I have been making it ever since.  They are SO YUMMY!

It makes a nice sturdy dough that is easy to cut into shapes once it is chilled.

Martha says to dip the cooled cookies into the melted white chocolate to frost them.  I prefer to slather it on with a knife.  I like the resulting texture.

But the best part is coming up with the fun sayings to pipe on the cookies.

I also tried making cake pops for the second time.  Cake Pops were made famous by Bakerella, and her website will tell you all you need to know about making your own.  In a nutshell, you bake a cake, crumble it in a bowl, mix in a can of frosting, form into balls, add the stick, dip in chocolate, embellish.  Let me just tell you that devil's food cake + chocolate frosting + melted chocolate coating = fabulous. 

The first time I tried to make these, though, was a complete fiasco.  The pops would just crumble and fall off the sticks.  This time I added almost the whole can of frosting to the crumbled cake (the recipe says to use 3/4 of a can).  Plus I dipped the stick in chocolate before inserting it into the pop to help it stay better.  And I thinned the dipping chocolate with shortening. 

These were for the Super Bowl so I made them in the shape of footballs.  I tried to melt white chocolate to make the laces, but it wasn't cooperating, so I used that writing icing that comes in tubes at the grocery store.

They turned out kind of lumpy, but at least they stayed on the sticks and you could tell they were supposed to be footballs.  I'll keep trying!