Last weekend I needed to do some baking for a large group, so I made some M & M’s biscuits. I used the 120 bickies for $4 recipe that I got off the Simple Savings website. I have also seen the recipe at Down to Earth and Retro Mummy.

Some of the finished bickies

The base dough is very simple:
500g Margarine
1/2 cup sugar
1 tin sweetened condensed milk
5 cups self raising flour (usually the dough is a bit sticky and I need to add extra flour – up to 1/2 cup)

Cream Sugar and margarine.
Add sweetened condensed milk and flour.
Mix all together until dough is formed.

I then separate the dough into smaller batches and add the flavourings. For the batch I made on the weekend they were mostly M & M bickies as I had a bucket to use up, but when I ran out of those I used choc chips.

Some of the dough with choc chips

The biscuits are rolled into teaspoon size balls then flattened. They are then placed on trays lined with baking paper and then cooked in a moderate oven for 10-15 minutes.

Ready to Bake

Some other flavours I have used are:

• Choc Chips and chopped Glace Cherries
• Choc Chips and Macadamia nuts
• Sultanas and Corn flakes
• Sprinkles (Hundred and Thousands)
• Milo and Coconut
• Sultanas
• Jam drops

They can also be frozen and defrosted for later use.

Making cake pops for the family function yesterday was not without issues, I posted on Facebook as I was making them: ” A Mummy is attempting to make cake pops but of the 10 I have made so far only about 4 look OK, the rest have fallen off their sticks ”

The first few steps were easy, I used this and this recipe as a basis for what to do.
The cake got baked successfully (Due to time contraints I cheated and used a packet mix, I prefer to make from scratch), crumbled fine as well. I then managed to add the frosting fine, roll them into balls and the put them in the freezer.

The not so good Cake Pops

When I took them out of the freezer and started decorating them, that is where the problems started. When I put the sticks in the balls some of them started to crack and fall apart, then those that went on sticks okay fell apart when I covered them in chocolate. So once I used up the chocolate I had melted, I posted the above quote on Facebook and then googled “Cake Pop Problems”, and found a couple of useful sites including this one and this one, there were a few others but of course can’t find them again. So the issue was that I had added too much frosting, rather then restart them (which I did not have time to do), I re rolled the remaining balls put them back into the freezer to harden them up. Then when I pulled them out, before I put the sticks into the balls, I used the suggestion of dipping the sticks into the chocolate before putting them into the cake which worked heaps better. I then worked quickly to cover them all in chocolate before the chocolate set and the did work better.
The ones that didn’t completely fall off but weren’t quite right, where turned straight onto a backing tray, which resulted in flat tops but at least they were still a pop.

A couple that fell apart when dipped in chocolate

With the chocolate, for the first batch I used a block of Cadbury Dairy Milk which worked quite well, for the second batch I used Nestle Melts and melted they were just too thick. I really needed to thin them out, other Aussies recommend Copha which is what I will use next time. I also found it easier to spoon the chocolate over the pops rather than dip them. With the white chocolate as the chocolate cooled, I used a spatula to spread the chocolate round.

The other thing was that the sprinkles went everywhere as I put them on the pops, I will probably be cleaning them up for weeks.

Hopefully this long post does not put you off making cake pops, so if you are making pops:

1. Allow plenty of time;
2. Do not add too much frosting;
3. Thin the chocolate (if required); AND
4. Most importantly: HAVE FUN!!!