Hence, December has a way of becoming a tad stressful.
So, I really can't be sure what possessed me to try my hand at The Bakerella's reindeer cake pops. It may have been the excess of eggnog that I was drinking...or quite possibly the large amounts of chocolate I had been inhaling for the previous three weeks.
The fact that Wilton's chocolate melts were on sale at Joanne's drove the nail in the coffin.
My coffin.
I will start by saying that Bakerella makes the famous "cake pop" look like such an easy endeavor.
NOT.
I mean how hard can dipping a wadded up piece of cake on a stick into a vat of melted chocolate really be?
Really. Hard.
Not to mention the seventeen hundred steps involved in creating the perfect cake-pop.
And that being said, I will share with you the results.
This was the very first little guy that I created. I was feelin' pretty confident at this point. I like how the little bump of chocolate below his red nose resembled a small mouth. And being that I did not have edible marker to draw a mouth, I was feeling pretty genius right about now.

This was reindeer number 2. My dipping technique wasn't quite as smooth as the previous "dip". However, at this point I hadn't lost my confidence. I was beginning to realize that this isn't as easy as it looks. The eye placement was creating a problem as they seemed to want to sink down into the chocolate.

Things slowly began to take a turn for the worse. I'm not sure if the children were ready to undertake such a lofty endeavor, J-boy was in charge of eye placement and S-girl was endowing each reindeer with antlers.

Then things got UGLY.
At this point I'm not really sure what happened. I began to lose my confidence. My "dipping" ability was fading. Apparently, so was S-girl's antler placement.

Look away if you must.
I'm not sure I can even say what happened with this poor soul. She looks as if she's had one too many.
The "lush" of the par-tay.

And this one?
You choose.
Confused?
Dazed?
Befuddled?
Any of the above will work..

This lovely lad will have great difficulty guiding Santa's sleigh.
Inspite of his "nose so bright"!

So, the moral of the story is....you will never find me making cake pops again.
Because I haven't got time for the pain....
no I haven't got room for the pain...
However, I will admit that the sheer excitement that my dear two year old displayed was well worth the production. He ran around yelling "reindeer cake balls!" for 10 minutes straight.
So, now that I'm thinking about it...I guess the pain was worth it.
For this one time.


We made the mistake of pulling these out too early in the evening. Before all the party guests had arrived. I was having great difficulty keeping them from being licked and mauled. Oh well, it was only family...I'm sure they wouldn't have minded knowing that they were eating previously licked cake-pops.
Below is a brief clip.
And yes, after doing quite a bit of video taping over the holidays...I am painfully aware of the tone in which I speak to my poor child. I also couldn't get him to yell out "reindeer cake balls!" for the camera. Isn't that always the way it goes!