Winter is coming

Being huge Game of Thrones fans, my friend Jess and I decided to get creative whilst watching this years finale episode by making ourselves some gruesomely delicious cake pops in the shape of Ned Starks decapitated head (I'm sorry, too soon?) to celebrate the occasion in style. The inspiration was from the Not Your Momma's Cookies recipe, though I took a few liberties when creating my own. The typical cake ball recipes seem to be red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, though I personally don't like that combination (I know, I'm a monster!) so I decided to get a bit creative with my recipe, and I think it worked out pretty well in the end. 

What will I need?

• 1 x cake, cooled completely. I went for chocolate but you can substitute this for any basic cake flavour your heart desires. 
• Approximately 1 cup of icing. This can be store bought or hand made, just make sure it isn't too runny. For a matching chocolate cake and icing recipe try this. 
• Bamboo skewers.
• 2 packets of white chocolate melts. 
• 1 packet of dark chocolate melts. 
• Toothpicks. 
• Red food dye. 
• Baking paper. 
• Baking tray
• Large box (cut the bottom so the depth is about 10 cm shorter than the length of the bamboo skewers). 

Method

1. Crumble the cooled cake in a large bowl, mixing with your icing of choice. It will be slightly sticky (and quite messy if you do it by hands, which I would recommend), but that will make it easily malleable. 
2. Roll the cake mixture into approximately 2.5 cm sized balls and place onto a baking paper lined tray. Place the tray in a fridge overnight, or if you want to speed up the process pop them into the freezer for an hour or two. 
3. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave (most packets will have melting instructions, otherwise try it in 30 second increments whilst stirring frequently) until it is glossy and smooth. 
4. Take the cake balls out of the fridge and carefully push one bamboo skewer through each ball, leaving the tip just slightly exposed. 
5. Dip each cake ball into the melted chocolate, making sure to cover the entire 'head'. Then place each cake pop into the box to dry (try using another skewer to poke holes in the top of the box). You may have to re-melt the chocolate if it starts to harden. 
6. With the leftover white chocolate, mix in red food dye until it starts to look 'bloody' enough. Using a toothpick, dip into the mixture and add some blood under the base of the cake pop head. 
7. Next up, melt the dark chocolate and get to designing the features that transform the cake pops into men. 
8. Again dipping toothpicks into the chocolate, applying it slowly to apply the hair. Then drawing a face onto the cake pop. You could also use a food writer to do this, but the one we bought didn't apply well. 
9. Last but not least, to add the extra touch you could apply chocolate on as a beard (we weren't quite game enough, but it was a great touch in the original recipe)

Makes approximately 30-40 cake pops.

Winter is coming! 

-Melissa