Living in a small town with allergies: Gluten Free, Soy Free, Casein Free Chocolate Cake Pops

Oh, so many things made but nothing blogged. Time hasn't allowed it. I have a hundred pics of foods I've made, maybe one day I'll get them on here.

However, I did want to get these up. I am not finished with them yet but wanted to get what I have done and if I don't get back to it today, I can always update with the finished pics later.

I saw a post last week about Cake Pops. They intrigued me. With having to make a cake at every school event, I am trying to be creative instead of sending in the same thing every time. So I thought, wth, I'll give these a shot. They are easy to make but take a lot of time and steps to do it.

If you're familiar with GF cake mixes, you know that to make a normal size cake you have to double the recipe. I never understood why that is. Why not just make a recipe for what everyone considers "normal". Oh well, either way, the chocolate cake recipe I used today is been the best tasting recipe I've made. I know everyone says that their non-gf friend/family/spouse says it tastes like normal. I must be doing something wrong because when I made them, no one I know thinks so. THIS recipe, however, to me, DOES taste like normal and my family and school kids also think so. Tho I imagine the 1st graders don't count, as all sweets are awesome lol

I don't have original recipes, and I don't have the authors permission so I hope that by posting where I got it from, that will suffice.

From the cookbook: Special Diets for Special Kids - Two by Lisa Lewis
Lisa Ackerman's Chocolate Cake

I doubled the recipe to make a 9x13 cake, this is the doubled recipe:

2 cups white rice flour
1 cup sorghum flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
1cup oil
1 cup milk substitute (I used Almond milk)
1 cup hot water
4 teaspoons vanilla

Preheat to 350.

Mix together dry and stir to combine. then add liquid ingredients and stir until well mixed.

Pour better into greased and floured 9x13-inch cake pan and bank approximately 40 minutes. Longer if needed to pass clean toothpick test. (I forgot to write down how long it took before it was done but I originally set the timer for 35 min, then again for 7 min, I think.)

When the cake was done, I let it cool for 10 minutes then removed from pan and let it cool completely.

Once cooled, break cake apart, I found it easiest to do with my hands, breaking apart until it was a big crumbly mess.

(oops, I forgot to take a pic before I added the icing)

I then made the following icing from The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook by Cybele Pascal

1 cup dairy-free, soy-free vegetable shortening (I used Palm Shortening)
pinch of salt
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup rice milk (I used Almond Milk)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. In the bowl of stand mixer, cream shortening and salt on medium speed for about 1 minute.
2. Add the sugar, milk and vanilla. Beat until smooth and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

From here, add the icing into the cake crumbs and mix until the icing is all mixed in.

Then roll into small balls and freeze for about an hour. This yielded 54 balls. I should have made some of them slightly smaller, I think.

Now here is where I ran into a problem. The coach called and they are having a last minute T-ball practice in 30 min, so I had to take them out of the freezer, because they can't be frozen, and now it's too late to decorate them tonight. So I'm gonna hope that they stay ok and I can finish them in time in the morning. I will update this after they are finished.
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May 24 - Ok, so I decided to put the cake balls into the fridge last night to stay cold. They were fine in there overnight. If anything, I should have put them in the freezer again before finishing them this morning, as they needed to be colder but I was very short on time.

I used 1 1/2 bags of Enjoy Life GF/DF/SF Mini Chocolate Chips, added 1 1/2 - 2 TB oil (I prefer grapeseed) and melted them in the microwave in 15 second intervals, stirring after each 15 seconds. The general guideline is 1 TB per bag of chips, but I don't know if it is because these chips have different ingredients or not, but it seemed very thick, the extra 1/2-1 TB oil seemed to smooth and thin it out much nicer.

Be sure the bowl is deep enough that you can cover the balls. I left some chips unmelted completely and used the melted chocolate to melt the unmelted chips as I didn't want it burnt. (huh???? lol)

The Cake Balls have a flat spot on the bottom from sitting and resting in the pan,

So I used this end to put the sticks in them. I wasn't sure what size sticks to get, I thought the 6" Wilton Popsicle Sticks would be a good size but they were too big to fit in my container, so I cut about 2" off of them so they would fit in my carrier.
To prepare the sticks, dip them in the chocolate, about 1/2"-1" (this picture shows a less amount that what was needed, I ended up redipping)

Insert the stick into the cake balls, approximately 1/2 way, making sure the chocolate is coming out the bottom

Then dip the ball into the chocolate, as you can see, my bowl was deep enough but I could have used more chocolate in it to cover it. Instead, leaving the ball centered, I moved the stick back and forth so that the chocolate would cover the ball completely.

I came across a problem here, the first cake ball was coming off the stick. I know the problem was that they weren't cold enough, and needed to go back into the freezer but I didn't have the time to do that. So for the rest of the pops I put them on the stick and spooned it over the balls. I did stop 1x (out of 40 balls) to stick them in the freezer for 15 min, and that made things so a lot more smoothly, they stayed on the stick a lot better. But next time I will probably do it for every 10 balls or so, of if possible, leave them in the fridge and take them out 1 at a time. Make sure you hold the sticks over the bowl to drain off a bit. Lightly tapping the stick helps the drips. Be sure you get plenty of chocolate around the bottom of the ball where it meets the stick, this helps to hold them in place.

Next I added the sprinkles

I used a 12"x1" piece of Styrofoam circle, it fit perfectly into my container but I had a horrible time trying to get the pops to stay upright. I never did figure out how to keep them upright so eventually just made 20 pops and 20 balls.