Gloverly Cupcakes

If you make a whole batch of brownies and don’t want to turn them all into reindeer, what do you do with the rest of the brownies? Eat them? Or if you’ve eaten too many already there is another option. 

I decided 30 reindeer were enough so I wanted to make something different with the rest of the brownies and decided to turn it into snowmen cake pops. My sister Becky had used rolos and giant chocolate buttons to make hats for something before so I decided to steal the idea for  snowmen. The noses were made out of orange tic tacs cut in half – I was planning on using mini orange Smarties but nowhere seemed to have any. The “coal” for the eyes and mouth was black cake sprinkles but a less fiddly method would be to pipe dots of black icing.

They were made in a very similar way to the reindeer cake pops. Make chocolate brownie balls, dip into white chocolate, put half a tic tac on for the nose, some balck sprinkles for the eyes and mouth and then a giant chocolate button and rolo for the hat!

I made them smaller than the reindeer, so more like the Christmas puddings, so that the hats looked more in proportion. In order to turn them into snowmen here’s a slightly more detailed description of what I did (although it is really really simple!):

1. Shape the chocolate brownie balls in the same way as described here.
2. Melt a bit of milk chocolate and use to stick 30 rolos upside down onto 30 giant buttons and leave to set.
3. Melt a lot of white chocolate in a tall mug – the key is to melt more than you need and have it something which is deep rather than a shallow bowl (to make it easier to dip them fully).
4. Dip the end (about 5mm) of a cake pop stick into the melted chocolate and then stick into a brownie ball. Repeat as many times as you want snowmen – I made 30.
5. Place these in the fridge and leave the chocolate to set – this will stop the balls falling off the sticks when you dip them into the chocolate.
6. Once they’re set dip the cake pops one at a time into the chocolate so that it just comes up to the top of ball. Shake a bit (or twizzle it round gently) over the mug to remove the excess chocolate and then poke some holes in upside down egg boxes and stand the cake pops in so that the chocolate can set.
7. Before the chocolate sets completely press half an orange tic tac onto each one for a nose – I dipped 10 into the chocolate and then went back to pressed the tictacs into the first one until all 10 of them had noses and then started dipping the next 10. If you put the noses on too soon they slide down!
8. Then, very carefully while the chocolate is still not set, place 2 chocolate sprinkles onto each one for the eyes and then 5 for the mouth.
9. Finally, before the chocolate sets completely, place a “hat” on top of each one.