Triple Chocolate Tim Tam Cake Pops

For our first Cook Club, Bel was hoping I’d go a little easy on you all (but mostly her, I suspect!) with something simple. So, wish granted – it doesn’t get much easier than my no-bake Tim Tam Cake Pops. I use this recipe HEAPS, it’s so quick and flexible, there’s minimal mess (always a good thing in my kitchen. I’m allergic to washing dishes…) and you can make the pops as simple – or as complicated – as your imagination will allow.

WHAT YOU NEED

1 packet of Milk Chocolate Tim Tams. For those of you not in Australia and therefore unable to get hold of the world’s yummiest treat – use Oreos.

80 grams of chilled cream cheese, such as Philly.

1 packet of dark chocolate melts.

Chocolate sprinkles for decoration (or, you could GO FOR IT and try coloured sprinkles or drizzled white chocolate or crushed M&Ms)

Cake Pop sticks. These are basically lollipop sticks, available for your local cake supplies shop or $2 Shop.

HOW IT’S DONE

Using a food processor or blender, give your whole pack of Tim Tams a quick blitz for about 20 seconds, just to break them up a little. Then add the cream cheese and blitz until the mixture all comes together in a ball. Note – if your kitchen is hot, or it’s a particularly warm day, you might find the mix gets a bit sticky to work with. If this is the case, just pop it in the fridge for ten minutes.

Take rounded-teaspoon sized scoops of the mixture, and roll into a ball. You should get about12 – 16 from the mix. Place on a plate or tray lined with baking paper, and chill for around half an hour.

Take a coffee cup, and fill it half way with chocolate melts. Using the microwave, melt chocolate in 10 second bursts, stirring in between. It’s really easy to ‘seize’ or burn chocolate if it’s over-heated, or you get any moisture into it (keep the water WAY away!), so be careful at this point. Once melted, dip one end of your Cake Pop stick into the chocolate – about 1cm – and push into your chilled chocolate ball, then back into the fridge to allow them to set.

Prepare a small dish or bowl by filling it with your chocolate sprinkles. Then, using the same microwave method, melt more chocolate. This time you need to almost fill the coffee mug. Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate, giving it a tap on the side of the mug to help remove the drips (probably the trickiest part!), then dip the top if your coated pop into your sprinkles. Use a glass or mug to stand your completed cake pops in while the chocolate sets.

And that’s it! All you need to do now is taste test them. Have a look and see what my tribe of chocoholic boys have to say… (Hint – not much, their mouths are too full of cake pops to speak!)

Enjoy, Bel and gang. I’m sure you’ll do just fine!

Ps – if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask me in the comments section below. I’ll be keeping my eye out and will be here to answer.

 Belinda’s Chocolate Cake Pops!

Cook club is coming to the Escape Club, so why don’t you join us! Mandy is a fantabulous cook, as we all know by her mouth-watering recipes. I, on the other hand, suck at cooking.

I failed Home Economics in high school. To some extent, flunking wasn’t entirely my fault. I’ve tried to remake the recipes in that lovely, photocopied and stapled together cook book, 20 years later and I am convinced it wasn’t me, it was the recipes.  They were not good, whichever way you cut it.

Who the heck eats carrot salad with sultanas in it anyway…? Eww.

I’d love to not be a failure in the kitchen, and if anyone’s recipes are worth testing its Mandy’s. So let’s see if I can manage to not screw up everything I touch in the Cook Club.

I’m sure some of the other staffers will want to get in on the fun, and hopefully I won’t be the only one giving stuff a go. Maybe they’ll post pics of their efforts, or impress us with youtube clips of their own.

I’m hoping Mandy will go easy on us for the first one. And if I should fail, at least it will be fun… I hope.

Cook club is coming to the Escape Club, so why don’t you join us!

First off we’ll be making Tim Tam cake pops!

I don’t have the recipe for this, but I had to share it with you anyway. It’s similar to Mandy’s famous chocolate box cake and was made for my friend Debbie’s daughter’s 21st b’day. I didn’t get to try it because it wasn’t gluten free but it looked amazing!

San Francisco is famous for many things. The Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Gay Pride, the Painted Ladies, Lombard street – the twistiest street in the world…the list goes on and on. And then – there’s the clam chowder.

One of my foodie ambitions was to try the famous San Franciscian chowder in a sourdough bread bowl while we were in town, and I wasn’t disappointed. Different versions are available from every second street vendor, but we got lucky on our very first purchase.

We stayed right on Fisherman’s Wharf, almost directly across the road from the world-renowned Boudin’s Sourdough Bakery – also the oldest bakery in the city. After a long day bus-touring around town, my beloved popped out to grab takeaway for the kids, and returned with this to our hotel: The original clam chowder in a bowl. You can see below how excited I was:

It was so omg delicious that we returned the next day for more, this time eating in at the downstairs cafe-style outdoor dining room. By the way, chowder goes to down really well with beer….

And finally, on our last night in San Francisco, we returned again to Boudin’s with our entire party of 16. This time we ate upstairs, which is more of a fine-dining experience. While I skipped the chowder this time around (for lobster), my 10yr old ordered it from the kid’s menu. Check out the turtle bread that it was served in!

So clam chowder achievement was unlocked. And it lived up to all expectations!

SAN FRANCISCO STREET FOOD

With a lack of wifi in some of our hotels, I haven’t quite been able to keep the pace with our most excellent adventure. As I write this, we’re about to head into our last full day in San Francisco, having already done Anaheim (Disneyland), Carlsbad near San Diego (Legoland), Hollywood and Las Vegas. Tomorrow we’re jumping on an early plane for the wilds of the one and only Big Apple – New York.

While we’ve enjoyed numerous fine dining experiences (more on that later), it’s also been great to check out the street food in various locations. My 2nd favourite so far was at Venice Beach, about an hour’s bus trip from Hollywood central.

My two older sons are mad keen skaters, so getting to the Venice skate park was a big must for this trip. I have to admit, even for me it was pretty awesome to be on the home turf of the legendary Z-Boys – surfers turned skaters, who, back in the 70’s, changed the sport of skateboarding to the high-flying extreme sport we know today. Venice Beach has this kind of magical vibe about it – street stalls, artists, rubbish, homeless folks (not so magical), musicians, and dancers, palm readers and loads of hand-made wares. But best of all was the food.

While there are lots of cafes and restaurants, we were in a bit of a hurry to get the boys to into the Venice Bowl, so we stopped at ‘Big Daddy and sons’ for pizza and burgers, where we were greeted by lovely Liz out the front, who was a great help with the questions we had for the menu (that might have had something to do with her fascination for my youngest son, who has been a HUGE hit in America.

Something to do with the blonde hair and glasses and a bit of an attitude, I think!) Big Daddy’s is basically a few holes in the wall – you order and pay at one, walk around the corner to another window and wait for your name to be called. Pizza is sold by the slice – at $2.99 we were expecting small pieces, so oldest son ordered three – but no, these things are the size of an entire small pizza back in Australia! Check out the pic below of Mr 6 taking on his slice of Margarita!  The pizza and burgers were all fab – not oily at all, and the accompanying fries were crisp and delish. And cheap. Cheap. Did I mention cheap? All five of us ate for around $40.

Not so cheap was the street food at the theme parks. Yeah, we expected that. And most of it tasted pretty much as you’d expect too. We did four days at Disneyland / California Adventure Park, a day at Legoland  and another at Universal Studios. While I stuck mostly to the trusty pizza slice and occasional hot dog, Lovely Husband discovered these: Smoked Turkey Legs. Hmmm. Not quite my thing, and at about $10 each, they aren’t the cheapest snack, but Simon loved them – especially with a beer in the scorching California sun.

Next up – San Fran chowder. Oh, my….