Last Minute Valentines Nutella Pie Pops!

In my obsessive middle-of-the-night pinning (pinterest is the only thing that keeps me awake whilst breast-feeding at 3am!)  I’ve recently seen several pins featuring Pie Pops. Oh yes! Move over cake –  PIE is now in lolly form. These little chocolatey hearts are perfect for Valentines – they’re super easy and only have three ingredients…if you use ready roll pastry. Okay, that may be cheating, but I have two kids. Its all about speed.

You will need (makes 9 pops):

• 250g ready-roll shortcrust pastry
• Nutella
• 1 egg
• heart cookie cutter
• lollipop sticks

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 c. Dust a clean surface with flour and roll out the pastry to about 3mm thickness. From the pastry cut out heart shapes with a cookie cutter.

 

3. Dollop a teaspoon of nutella into the centre of half the hearts. Then mix the egg in a small bowl and use a pastry brush to brush a little egg around the nutella.

4. Place the remaining hearts on top and press around the edges with a fork. Mark a cross on the top with a knife (to let the air bubbles out and stop your hearts exploding!).

 

5. Brush the egg wash over the top of the pies and pop the pops in the oven for about 15 minutes, or until golden. Once cooked, insert a lollipop stick and leave on a rack to cool.

 

Now eat your heart out. Ha! I did a joke!

Tia x

  

Red Velvet Cake Pops

Cake pops have always been a bit of an enigma to me. I always thought you needed a special mould to make these cake delights, which had put me off trying them. But after having spare sponge left over from this cake recently, I bit the bullet and decided to give them a whirl.

You will need:

• Sponge cake with red food colouring in

For the buttercream:

• 175g unsalted butter
• 350g icing sugar
• 2 tbsp milk
• 3 tbsp vanilla extract

For the decoration:

• 200g of milk chocolate
• 100s and 1000s sprinkles

Optional:

• Floristry foam (or similar) to keep the pops upright

Make the sponge and the buttercream. Allow the sponge to completely cool, then break into chunks. Mix the sponge and buttercream together.

Using your hands roll the mixture into balls. Don’t make the balls too big as they will be too heavy and will fall off the stick (learn from my mistakes!). Pop them in the fridge to harden for 30 minutes.

Whilst the balls are in the fridge, melt the chocolate. Once melted dip the end of the stick in the chocolate and push the cake onto the stick. Dip the cake into the chocolate and roll them in the 100s and 1000s.

Whilst the chocolate set, I put the pops in floristry foam to keep them upright.

For a first attempt these pops went down surprisingly well with my husband, who barely bothered to take them out of their foam stand before eating them So, cake pops – not the enigma I thought they were!

~ Laura xx ~