Readers' choice: Top 10 all-time favorite recipes

Here's a list of the most popular recipes from Stir It Up! since we first launched in 2009.

7. How to make cake pops

The Gourmand Mom
Cake pops are a fun alternative to cupcakes for birthday and holiday-themed parties.

By Amy Deline, The Gourmand Mom

You will need:

  • 1 13×9-inch cake
  • Cake frosting (approximately 1-1/2 cups)
  • Lollipop sticks
  • Candy Melts (approximately 4 cups)*
  • Sprinkles or other decorating candies (optional)
  • Block of Styrofoam

*If your grocery store doesn’t carry the candy melts, check your local craft store. They come in all sorts of colors and flavors!

1. Bake a 13x9-inch cake. Use your favorite homemade recipe or one box of any flavor cake mix. (You can bake the cake a day ahead of time, if desired.)

2. Once cool, crumble the cake into fine crumbs. This is a perfect job for little helpers. You’ll end up with a big bowl of fine cake crumbs.

3. Combine the cake crumbs with any flavor frosting. A container of prepared frosting works fine or use your favorite homemade. Depending on how moist the cake is, you probably will not need the whole container of frosting. About 3/4 of a 16-ounce container should do the trick. You want the mixture to be moist enough to mold, but not too mushy. Mushy cakes will have a harder time staying on the sticks – lesson learned the hard way.

4. Refrigerate for about 30-45 minutes (or longer) to help firm up the mixture.

5. Roll the mixture into balls, just over an inch in diameter.

6. Melt a small quantity of the candy melts according to package directions. Dip the end of each lollipop stick into the melted candy, then insert the stick a little more than halfway through each cake ball. Place each pop upside down on a baking sheet and freeze until quite firm.

7. Once firm, warm the candy melts according to package directions. Use a container that is tall and narrow enough to fully emerge each cake pop into. A 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup worked well.

8. Dip each pop into the melted candy. Gently swirl the pop to remove excess candy. (Skipping the swirl step will result in a candy coated stick. Trust me on that one.)

9. Decorate with sprinkles or candies, if desired. Then, place each pop into a piece of Styrofoam to dry upright at room temperature. (Refrigeration will cause condensation on the surface of your pops. Another lesson learned the hard way.) The candy exterior will harden at room temperature.

Read the full post on Stir It Up!

7 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.