Lollipops Melt

My Daughter turned 4 on Monday and to celebrate her coming of age at school last Friday we took cupcakes to share with the class. DD picked lollipop cupcakes that we found on the Martha Stewart website and she wanted them to be tangerine flavored.

I found this lemon cake recipe in the Martha Stewart site and replaced anything lemon with tangerine...

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
3 cups cake flour (not self-rising), sifted, plus more for pans
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Zest of 2 lemons
1 cup buttermilk

I thought that this would be a nice rich cake with buttermilk and 5 eggs but it was just a very eggy cake with a sticky texture and heavy. How disappointing.

For the Frosting I went with the 7 minute Jello Frosting and used orange Jello, the closest I could find to tangerine...

31/2 tbsp. Jello (any flavour)

1/2 cup hot water1

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 egg whites unbeaten

dash of salt

Dissolve Jello in water in top of double boiler. Add sugar, egg whites and salt. Beat mixture for about one minute with rotary or electric beater until well mixed. Place over rapidly boiling water. Beat constantly about 7 minutes or until frosting stands up in peaks. Transfer to another bowl and beat about one minutes or until thick enough to spread.

I the frosting was ok, I make this every march for my Mother's Lemon chiffon cake. but it did not set up as fast I needed for this application.

Finding lollipops like in the picture on Martha's website was impossible (you know how kids are, it has to look the same) so I got the lollipops that are in the picture. They worked ok but they were not as pretty.

Thursday DD and I went to work and made our eggy cake, and runny frosting and stuck the lollipops in the cakes and wrapped them up so that they were all ready to take to school on Friday. Did you know that lollipops melt when enclosed with moist cake, I didn't. So the ugly green in the lollipops melted all over the lollipops making the sugar sprinkles on the frosting to me a slimy green mass/mess what ever one would cal it.

DD's teacher was so nice and said that the cupcakes were wonderful, she is such a sweetheart.