Apple Pie Cookies and Cake Pop Tips

The other day my friend MC stumbled across this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  Little apple pie cookies, so cute right?   We were supposed to hang out that weekend so we decided to make a batch.  We altered the recipe slightly by using 2 boxes of pre made pie crusts.  You can find the recipe here, Smitten Kitchen provides great tips and pics to help you make these babies.  My friend made it again and used cute little flower cookie cutters.  The only tip we had was after we cut out all the pie crust discs, we put them back in the freezer for 10 minutes to ensure that they were nice and cold. 

So cute and the perfect little pocket of goodness.  I popped these back in the toaster oven to heat them up and they were amazing!  This is the prefect mini dessert for your next get together.  It’s sure to be a crowd pleaser. 

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you know that recently I made a huge batch of Cake Pops for my friends son’s 1st birthday party.  The goal?  175 cake pops!!  We’ve all seen the recipes posted by many, but I thought I would share some of my tips that I learned along the way. 

1. Use a small cookie or meatball scooper.  This ensures that all your cake pops are approximately the same size and makes the process a little faster, even though you still need to roll the balls.
2. Be sure to freeze or refrigerate the balls long enough to get dense, it makes them a lot easier to work with.
3. To dip that many balls and not constantly have to microwave or double boil chocolate and keep it warm- I used my mini crockpot!!!  It was PERFECT. 
4. Chocolate seems to be the trickiest part, having a tub of Crisco on hand to work with the melting chocolates was a life saver.  If the chocolate is to heavy, you will loose many balls in the bowl of hot chocolate. 

Oh and another confession??  You will thank me for this if you are hosting a party and want to make cake pops but don’t have the time…

   5.  USE CAKE DONUT HOLES!!

If you need cake pops in a rush, cake donut holes work great!!!  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make the 175 cake pops in time, or that some of them would break during transport.  I bought two boxes of Entemann’s donut holes that worked great!  If you are making a lot this is a complete time saver!! 

Above are the donut holes and the ones with the blue sprinkles are the ones that I made by hand.  While the homemade cake pops definitely taste better and are a lot more moist, the donut cake pops are pretty darn tasty and so quick to make too!!  Here’s the finished product. 

Everyone loved the cake pops, I heard that there were none left at the end of the party.  Happy 1st Birthday to Kellan!!