Nutella Crunch Cake Pops

Tags

cake pops, Chocolate, Nutella, Rice Krispies

Ah, Nutella.  Have you ever had it?   It’s a dreamy, creamy, smooth chocolate hazlenut spread that can pretty much be described as heaven on a spoon.

As it turns out, this wonderful food item has its own day, World Nutella Day, (February 5th)!  Thank goodness I have trusty Twitter friends like Tara (@ChipChipHooray), otherwise I would’ve been completely oblivious to this fact.

I was planning on making chocolate cake pops for a Super Bowl party I was attending, but since the big game happened to coincide with this new-found holiday, I had to incorporate Nutella somehow… yay!… I love experimenting in the kitchen!  And I remember watching a recent episode of Top Chef where some of the chef-testants used Rice Krispies to add texture, so I decided to toss them in there too!

I can modestly confidently say that the result was a mild stroke of genius 🙂  Here’s how it all went down…

Ingredients:
– prepared chocolate cake
– chocolate frosting
– Nutella
– Rice Krispies cereal
– dark chocolate candy melts

Step 1. Crumb your cake. I prefer to do it by hand, as I think using a food processor or stand mixer can make the consistency too fine.

Step 2.  I combined a small amount of chocolate frosting with a generous helping of Nutella.  Unfortunately, I don’t have exact measurements, but go with your gut until you get an even combination of consistency and flavor.  Then fold that into the crumbs.  Note: Nutella is very rich, so start off by adding small amounts of this mixture.  You can always add more mixture if the crumbs are too dry, but there is no turning back from a saturated crumb mix.

Step 3.  Once you get your desired crumb mix consistency, fold in the Rice Krispies. Add as much as you’d like for however crunchy you’d like the pops.  I wouldn’t add too much as the individual Krispies create some logistical problems (discussed in the Step 5).  For a full cake, I’d use about 1 cup of ceral.

Step 4.  Roll the cake balls.  Make sure they are formed firmly.  If they are too soft, they will fall apart in the following steps.

Step 5.  Dip the tip of your lollipop stick and insert it into the pop.  As I mentioned in Step 3, the Krispies can cause some logistical problems – they make it challenging to drive the stick straight through.  Looking at the pop on the right, you can see how it split apart after I put the stick in it.  If this happens – don’t despair!  Drizzle some melted chocolate in the cracks, then squish the ball back into shape and let it chill for a few minutes.

Step 6.  Dipping the pops.  I usually dip the pop in the chocolate, spin it around to get it evenly coated, then tap off the excess.  However, with the Krispies in there, it made the cake ball a little weaker, and it’d fall off the stick, as shown below.  While this isn’t a cute look for a party, my hubby was happy to “taste test the bloopers”.  For these pops, I found the best technique was to insert the pop in the bowl, and spoon chocolate all around it, then lightly tap it to get the excess off.

And there you have it!

Word to the wise: this is not a recipe you can make too far in advance.  I made them at 3:00pm, and by 9:00pm at the party, the Krispies lost their crunch, having absorbed the moisture inside of the cake pop.

No pressure, but now you only have 364 days to prepare for the next World Nutella Day… how do you like to use scrumptious spread?