Halloween Project #8: Ghost and Skull Cake Pops

I am learning a TON about white chocolate this week. Here are the two most important things:

- If you overheat your chocolate, it will scorch and become absolutely useless.
- Melting/melted chocolate can't get wet! If this happens, it will have the same reaction as overheated chocolate: it will get very stiff and absolutely useless. Bonus annoyance: This means you can't add food coloring to your white chocolate! Perhaps they make a dry food dye, but that's certainly not what I have, and it's something I learned the hard way.

So today, I have some plain white ghost and skull cake pops for you. They're rather easy, and super tasty.

What you'll need:

-Cake, of course! I used a box cake, because I'm lazy. And this isn't teribly important, as this will be crumbs in no time.
- Black Decorating gel
-White Chocolate
-Flavored Creamer of your choice (I used White Chocolate Macadamia Nut)
- Lollipop sticks
-Foam block, or a makeshifted ghetto rigged contraption to keep your pops upright after they've been dipped in chocolate (Mine was foam board and a couple books taped together...)

1. Bake your cake according to package/recipe directions. After it has cooled completely, break it apart into chunks and put them in a large mixing bowl. Using a fork, break apart the chunks until your cake has been turned into crumbs.

2. Add your creamer. I think I end up using somewhere between 1/4 - 1/2 cup, but what I really look for it that it's moist, and that the cake crumbs stick to each other.

3. Shape your cake crumbs into triangles and ovals. Make sure your triangles are thick enough so they won't break once you put them on the lollipop stick. Cover a baking sheet in aluminum foil and place the triangles and ovals onto foil. Freeze for 20 minutes, or refrigerate for an hour.

4. Melt a little white chocolate, and stick the lollipop sticks in the white chocolate, and then insert into the cake pops about 1/3rd of the way through, if not halfway. Refrigerate for about 15 - 25 minutes.

5. Melt the rest of your white chocolate, and dip the cake pops into the white chocolate, placing them in your foam block, or makeshifted ghetto rigged contraption. Refrigerate or freeze one last time to be sure the chocolate has hardened.

6. Give the triangles ghost faces, and the skulls skull faces! Om nom away.

I was really hoping to make some pumpkins, but my heart was broken when I added the food coloring to my chocolate and it completely seized. I like these guys, though. They came out very nicely, and I'm very pleased :)

Gabe is almost finished with his assignment, which is what these are for. He still has some loose ends for some of these projects to tie up, and as they are tied up, more projects will be provided! I have some days off work soon, so hopefully I will be able to manage to do these, and be ready for NaNo come November 1st. I am so nervous! There's no way I'm ready....but I still look forward to writing that victory post!

Scarf with Pockets

What a brilliant idea, right? Right. I wish I could even take credit for the idea, but a friend of mine commissioned me, and I couldn't say no. It's basically a scarf, but about 2 feet longer than you'd like, then sew up the pockets. If you're interested, here's the pattern for this exact scarf, but this scarf can pretty much be done with any set of colors or patterns, just sew up some pockets at the end.

This scarf is long enough to be the appropriate length for pocket usage after it's been wrapped around your neck once. Snuggly! :3

Color A - The short section of color (Purple in this scarf)
Color B - The long section of color (Black in this scarf)

Ch 32 w/ color A, dc in the 3rd crochet from the end, dc to end of scarf (30 dc)

[[Dc 9 more rows of color A (10 rows)

Change color to color B, dc 30 rows of color B. (40 rows)]]

Tie in loose ends.

Fold Color A over so that is goes over 25 rows of color B, leaving 5 rows of color B still exposed. Using a tapestry needle, sew both sides together using color B yarn. Fold inside out so the seams aren't able to be seen. I did this first instead of doing both pockets last, so I would have an idea of how long it was going to be. I didn't want to finish the scarf thinking it would be long enough, only to sew the pockets over to find it was too short.

Repeat directions between the [[double brackets]] 5 more times.

dc 10 rows of color A. Finish off.

Tie in all loose ends

Now sew up another pocket. Since you're going to be flipping this pocket inside-out, be sure to fold it over to the opposite side of where your first pocket is, then when you fold it inside-out, both pockets will be on the same side.

Now you will have a scarf to keep your neck and hands warm during the winter! Enjoy.