With less than a month to go until Valentine’s Day, it’s time to get thinking about how to woo the special someone in your life, or celebrate the fun you can have being single. Whether you’re currently costing up delivery of red roses to your sweetheart’s door, or you’re planning a night in with the girls and a bottle of bubbly, these cake pops are absolute winners. Seriously, these little babies will win any foodie’s heart!

Now, it’s only fair to tell you upfront that they do take time to make. A lot of time, so prepare accordingly. You might even want to have a little practice run, which is why I’m keen to get this recipe out to you early.

Ingredients:

1 box shop-bought red velvet cake mix

1 container shop-bought cream cheese frosting

1 pack of white chocolate

24 cake pop sticks (available in most large supermarkets)

Sugar strand decorations

I know it sounds like a bit of a cheat to use pre-made cake mix, but after thorough research across blogs and food websites, I’ve ascertained that we can definitely get away with it!  As I’ve already mentioned, it’s a long process from start to finish, so if you can cut out an hour or so of preparation, then that’s really quite handy and should not be frowned upon.

If you’ve got plenty of time on your hands and want to go the whole hog, there are hundreds of red velvet cake recipes online. Just bake your cake, and then follow the directions below from point 2 onwards.

Directions

1. Make the cake according to the instruction on the box. Simple!

2. Once the cake has cooled, crumble it in a big bowl. Mix in the cream cheese frosting with your hands. This is very messy, but really is the best way to combine the whole mixture.

3. Cool the mixture in the fridge for an hour.

4. Make small balls from the dough. This is really messy, as you can see from the photos, but they don’t have to be super-neat. Once they’ve cooled in

stage 5, they’ll be easier to work with.

5. Let the cake balls set in the freezer for about an hour. Once you remove them from the freezer, you should be able to mould them into neat spheres much more easily.

6. Melt the chocolate in the microwave. 1-2 minutes should be all you need.

7. Now it’s time for the fun to begin. Dip the end of the lollipop stick into the chocolate and then stick it in a cake ball.

8. Hold the stick horizontally over the chocolate bowl and spoon chocolate over the top, twisting the cake pop as you pour to ensure an even coverage.

9. Sprinkle on sugar strand decorations before the chocolate sets.

10. Either pop upright in some Styrofoam, or as I did, just tip them upside down on parchment – they still look impressive this way round too but with much less ‘drippage’.

Very best of luck, Casanovas!

We’d love to hear how you get on – share your photos with us on Instagram.