Cake Pops and Apple Tartlets

I went to visit some family friends with my mom yesterday, and she insisted I bake something as a gift to bring along. My mom's strongly suggested apple tarts (seems it's her favorite dessert out of my whole repertoire...), but I've been baking only that since summer break started, so I wanted to make something else.

I settled for cake pops. My mom dug out some old, wrinkled apples, so I thought I'd try and use those up. I used my handy vegan cake recipe, adjusted a bit for the use of grated apples and a small handful of wild strawberries picked from the garden (the cake itself isn't vegan this time around because I didn't have any non-dairy milk and had to use cow milk).

After the cake cooled, it was a simple matter of breaking it into pieces to blend into crumbs, add in enough homemade applesauce (cooked, grated apple) for it to hold together well, and making spheres out of the batter. I made them roughly 1.5 tablespoons per cake pop. After refrigerating the spheres for a while, I dipped toothpicks in chocolate before poking them into the cake spheres. Back in the fridge, then coating the whole thing in melted chocolate and sprinkling toasted, crushed almond slivers.

After tasting one, my mom still wanted apple tarts, so I worked at them after dinner last night. (Seems I always do apple tarts and cake pops together...). Good thing I still had crust dough I had prepared last time in the freezer.

The apple variety I was using was not very good for this... After microwaving the apple slices (see tutorial), they would stiffen again once cooled. So instead of microwaving the life out of these apple slices, I boiled them in a brown sugar syrup.

Because I felt that the syrup gave the apples enough sweetness already, I opted for not glazing them. They look less shiny, of course, but I can guarantee the flavor's right.

And since I still had leftover cake crumbs and applesauce, I made spheres out of them last night, and left them in the fridge overnight. Earlier, I got them out, stuck toothpicks in them, and I just finished coating them in chocolate and their sprinkling of almonds. I left them on a silicone baking mat wrapped around the flat, round part of my springform pan.

Since I had just finished coating them right before I took pictures, some of the chocolate coatings are not set yet, but they will soon be.

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I stupidly left my cup measuring spoon things at my college dorm, so I had to do things by weight. Here's the amounts I used for this spiced and fruity version of the cake used.

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SPICED and FRUITY CAKE RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 218 g flour
• 125 g brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 pinch of salt
• cinnamon, as much as desired
• 200 g milk
• 55 g neutral oil
• 117 g grated/mashed apples and strawberries
• 1 tbs while vinegar

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C
2. In a large bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk wet ingredients (including fruits).
4. Add wet to dry ingredients, mix until combined.
5. Pour into prepared pan, bake for around 25 mins or until a toothpick comes out clean.