Monday, January 16, 2012

"Superfying" Marlie's Marvelous Cake Pops


Okay, I'm not really sure, if "superfying" is a word, but Urban Dictionary defines "superfy" as "to make super awesome; to extremely improve the condition of" or "to make something super." My blogging friend Marlie's marvelous cake pops are already super, yet Hayden and I "superfied" them some more with our winnings from her superfood giveaway (and photographed them lined up to look like Hayden's favorite mouse; Minnie, of course ... a girl can wear blue, too).

The lovely lady and raw food artist of Barefoot and Frolicking sent us some superfoods from Truly Organic Foods, including some organic hemp seeds, Maple Mesquite Candied Walnuts and a salad booster. They took a while getting here, due to the holidays and being shipped from Canada to the U.S., but these super goodies have been worth the wait.

First of all, the salad booster really does kick your raw basics up a notch. This combination of organic sprouted seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and chia), spirulina, Himalayan crystal salt, chlorella, dulse, kelp, dill weed, spices, lemon peel and cayenne, adds a little something special to your everyday salads, spices up veggie juices and smoothies, and makes raw tomato soup even more comforting and yummy (it probably tastes good on most raw soups, but I've been using it on traditional tomato).

Now, that I told you about the salad booster, let's move on to today's ingredients. As I'm not sure raw cake pops from Marlie would actually survive the trip here, I opted to make some myself, "superfying" them even more with the superfood hemp seeds and "candied" walnuts. I swapped out some the coconut flakes for hemp seeds in her luverly vanilla recipe, and replaced the cashews with the walnuts.

Since the raw walnuts were already sweetened with maple, mesquite and spices, I eliminated the other sweeteners from the original recipe (with the exception of 1/2 tsp. of lucuma powder for good measure). There was also no need for the coconut oil, due to the higher fat content in the walnuts.

Did you follow all of that? If not, here's our superfied version of Marlie's recipe, only in a much smaller amount (we made enough for a trio of cake pops).


Marlie's Marvelous
Luverly Vanilla
Cake Pops "Superfied!"
*The title is a mouthful, but the recipe is the perfect bit-size superfood treat for the new year. No need to worry about overindulging, as this modified recipe makes only a trio of pops, based on Marlie's Luverly Vanilla Cake Pops.
To make the cake pop filling, process all the ingredients, except for the vanilla, in a mini food processor or personal-size blender (I used a Magic Bullet blender), until the nuts and seeds are ground and begin to form a dough (don't worry if some of the walnuts aren't entirely ground, as it's nice to find some pieces of the walnuts sprinkled throughout the finished cake pop). Chill the dough in the fridge for about 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into three sections, roll them into balls and place them on top of lollipop making sticks. Chill the dough in freezer or fridge for another 20 to 30 minutes. In the meantime, make the dark cacao coating found on Marlie's site (I only made a half batch, which I used to dip the three pops and then make more chocolates with flower-shaped candy molds).

After the cake pops have chilled, dip them in the dark cacao coating, sprinkle the tops with hemp seeds and garnish with another Maple Mesquite Candied Walnut. Allow to set in the fridge until ready to serve. Yum!

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Hayden and I did a video to thank Marlie and Truly Organic Foods. We were actually crazy enough to attempt dipping one of the pops on camera, which probably wasn't the best idea. I only dipped one, before turning off the camera and cleaning up the mess Hayden made with the whisk (never let a toddler run off with a chocolate-covered whisk). At least the chocolate-covered fun was worth it.

Speaking of a little fun, I'm a huge fan of the Lookbook Cookbook site. A request had been sent out via e-mail (and on the site) for photo submissions from its followers (need not be professional), so I snapped a few photos of me with the cake pops. Then, I sent them to Lookbook Cookbook just for kicks (along with some past shots of Hayden already posted on my blog). They're probably getting a good laugh at them about now :-)

*****

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