It's the second week of January in Central Pennsylvania, do you know what that means? It's Farm Show Week!
The Pennsylvania Farm Show is in its 95th year and is the largest indoor agricultural event in America. People travel from all over the country to take part. There are competitions, attractions, food, and every kind of agricultural animal you could imagine.
One of the most popular competitions at the Farm Show is the Sheep-to-Shawl contest. A five member team (one shearer, three spinners, and one weaver) compete by shearing a sheep, spinning the wool into yarn, and weaving a 22-by-78 inch shawl. The shawls are then judged and a winner is chosen before the shawls are auctioned off, usually bringing the teams hundreds of dollars.
Working at a local news station means I see wall-to-wall coverage of the Farm Show every year. So this year, I decided to make a Farm Show themed treat to celebrate and I decided to make cake ball pops.
I did a lot of thinking and planning, trying to decide how I wanted to decorate the cake pops. There are a lot of great little candies that would work, even mini marshmallows. But I am a fan of buttercream icing.
I went to Wilton's website for some inspiration and I found their Chocolate Chip Cake Ball Pops recipe.
I gathered the ingredients and got to work.
While the cake was baking, I made two batches of icing and colored them. I use the Wilton buttercream recipe that I learned when I took my first cake decorating class. I use this icing for all my baked goods, it is super easy to make and the best tasting.
I made the vanilla buttercream and chocolate buttercream recipes.
One of the tips I learned from the cake decorating class that I always use is that if you want to make true black icing, start with chocolate icing, it's easier to go from brown to black than white to black.
I dyed a cup of chocolate icing black for details on the sheep cake pops.
I dyed about about a cup or so of vanilla icing green and blue for the yarn colors.
After the cake cooled, I crumbled it into a large bowl and added the mini chocolate chips. To make it even more decadent, I mixed the chocolate buttercream into the crumbs.
I measured out a heaping tablespoon to make the cake balls.
For the sheep, I rolled them into slight oval shapes.
For the balls of yarn, I rolled them into circles.
The cake balls were put on cookie sheets and placed in the freezer to chill.
When they were hard enough to handle being dipped in the candy melts but still soft enough to insert the pop stick, I took the cake balls out of the freezer.
I melted the candy melts in the microwave and allowed them to cool to room temperature.
I dipped the end of the stick in the candy melt and then pushed it into the cake ball. This helped the cake ball stay attached to the stick.
I then dipped the cake ball into the candy melt.
I slowly twirled the pop, trying to keep the coating as smooth as possible until it hardened enough to set aside.
I'm not going to lie, this took a while, a lot longer than I thought it would. But this is not something you want to rush.
After the candy melt hardened, it was time to start decorating. The only thing I used, other than the buttercream, were Wilton's Rainbow Chip Crunch sprinkles.
Using the black icing and a #3 decorating tip, I outlined and filled in the sheeps' faces.
I put a pink sprinkle in each one for the nose. Then, using a #1 decorating tip and white icing, I gave each sheep eyes and a mouth.
And, finally, with white icing and a #3 tip, I piped swirls all over the sheeps' bodies. They turned out super cute and fluffy!
For the balls of yarn, I took a #3 tip and piped circles around the cake balls.
I wanted to do something special to display my Sheep-to-Shawl cake ball pops, so I got a basket, a half ball of styrofoam, tacky glue, and some yarn.
The night before I made the cake ball pops, I loosely wrapped the yarn around the styrofoam and glued it on, leaving enough space between the rows of yarn to push the pop sticks into the styrofoam.
I absolutely loved how these cake ball pops turned out!
They're almost too cute to eat!
