Little Mashies Healthy Cake Pops
When Ariella asked if she can make cake pops I was a little bit dubious! I’ve seen them and they look full of sugar, chemicals and junk! She did some research and found a video that showed the process.. start with some cooked cupcakes, break them apart and squash them, mix with a butter based icing sugar or frosting, roll into balls, insert sticks, freezer for 20 minutes, then dip in melted chocolate and roll in sugary sprinkles! Wooh! Basically filled with sugar and probably best saved for birthday parties or special occasions!
Anyway.. Ariella really wanted to give it a go so we agreed that we would first make a variation of our “go to” healthy hidden vegetable vanilla cake (basically it needed to be less moist than our standard recipe), we would use a good quality dark chocolate, and we would cover it in freeze dried fruit pieces (that went out the window as we couldn’t find any)!
Here is what we did! First make a less moist version of our Healthy Hidden Vegetable Vanilla Cake.
Cake Ingredients:
3 small sweet potatoes (orange, purple or white), grated
4 eggs
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted (or melted butter would be fine)
1/3 cup rice malt syrup (or honey/maple syrup would be fine)
1 T vanilla paste + 1 T vanilla powder (the seeds from 2 real vanilla pods would be better but this is all we had, it was still delicious)
1/3 cup coconut sugar (or rapadura sugar)
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
Cake Pop glue ingredients:
2 T flaxseed flour
6 T water
1 T rice malt syrup (or honey/maple syrup/brown rice syrup)
Toppings:
1/4 cup Dark Chocolate
Freeze Dried fruit pieces, goji berries or coloured sprinkles
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160 Degrees Celsius
2. In a bowl, combine grated sweet potato with the other wet ingredients and stir well. If you own a food processor or Thermomix you could mix at speed 3 for about 30 seconds.
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix well so that all of the ingredients are well combined. If you have a food processor or Thermomix do speed 3 again for another 30 seconds.
4. Line a cake tin or loaf with a 30cm Little Mashies reusable wrap/bake/cover (the XL size). If you don’t have Little Mashies reusable wraps then use baking paper to line the cake tin.
5. Spoon the cake mixture into the cake tin or loaf tray and put into the oven for 50 minutes.
6. Once cooked (slightly bouncy to touch) carefully pull the cake out of the oven and leave it somewhere safe to cool down.
7. When it has cooled enough to touch pull it out by lifting the reusable wrap on two sides. Leave the cake another 20 minutes to cool down.
8. Put the cake into a bowl and pull it apart with your fingers, crumbling it and squeezing it until it is a crumbly dough like consistency.
9. To make the cake pops stick together you need a gooey, sticky substance.. A cake pop glue. Usually recipes use icing or frosting. I came up with a healthier option. In a cup mix 2 T flaxseed flour (flaxseed flour is simply flaxseeds blended in a food processor or smoothie maker to become like a powder).. you could also use chia seeds! Mix the flaxseed flour with 6 T of water. The flaxseeds will absorb the water and become sticky and gooey. We added 1 T of rice malt syrup to this mixture as well so that the strong flaxseed taste couldn’t be detected in the cake pops. If you use chia seeds instead of flaxseeds you won’t need a sweetener.
10. Add 2 spoons of the flaxseed glue to the crumbled cake mixture and using your fingertips combine it.
11. Squash together approximately a tablespoon of the cake mixture and shape it into a ball. Place the ball onto a Little Mashies XL reusable wrap sheet (on a plate, chopping board or tray) and repeat this step until all the cake mixture has been used.
12. Put skewers into the middle of the balls and pop the tray with balls into the freezer for a minimum of 20 minutes.
13. Once the balls are hard to touch melt the dark chocolate in a double boiler. We choose chocolate that has 3 -5 ingredients as this is the healthiest option for kids (check labels usually a good chocolate is cacao butter, cacao, vanilla & sugar). A double boiler is a saucepan with some water (boiling) and a small pan on top with the chocolate inside. The steam rises and melts the chocolate in the top pan without burning it.
14. Place the melted chocolate in one bowl, and the sprinkles, goji berries, or freeze dried fruit in another bowl.
15. Dip one ball at a time into the melted chocolate and then into the bowl with the toppings.
16. Place the ball back onto the reusable wrap covered tray and repeat step 15 until all the balls are covered the way you like.
17. Put the tray in the fridge until the chocolate goes hard (approx 10mins). Then put the cake pops into a reusable silicone bag so they stay fresher for longer. We used the Little Mashies 1500ml bag.
18. Eat & enjoy!