Tea or Coffee Anyone?

I like to try and experiment with my cake treats, otherwise it would be very easy to fall into the familiar rut of chocolate or vanilla cake, with plain decorations. I like to use the flavours to inspire the design, as it were and to really make something new. Think back to my post about my "Poptails" (click HERE for the posting), where I used the different flavours of cake to lead me to a particular cocktail, which I then used the main elements of to decorate the cake pops. For example, I use Guinness in my chocolate cake (not with small humans), so I created an Irish Car Bomb-pop with the Guinness cake, Irish cream in the icing, and caramel topping. The cake also inspired the designs with the Tea-Pot Truffles I made for my Mother's tea party (posting HERE), where I used Earl Grey-Infused cake and Green Tea-Infused cake to make the little tea pots. The truffles I'm talking about in this post didn't reflect the shape of the element which gave the cake its flavour as with the tea pots, but the toppings were most definitely chosen because of the flavour of cake.

In this particular instance I used the Earle Grey-infused cake again, and Coffee-infused cake to make these truffles to bring to my Uncles when I stayed there this Summer. I decorated the top of the tea-infused truffles with social tea biscuits and the coffee-infused truffles were decorated with chocolate covered coffee beans. These made excellent little hostess gifts, and my Uncle and Aunt were very pleased with them. The least I could do for spending a few days with them!

 

Personally, I was inspired my Mum to make these treats, when she bought me the Cake Pop book by Bakerella. Most of my baking and cooking is inspired by my Mother, but as much as I enjoy making these, I do need someone to eat them for me! My Dad was always good for that when my Mother did her baking, and my husband fills that role in our house now. My Dad never got to try these particular creations of mine (though I subjected him to many when I was growing up), which I'm sorry about because I think he would have liked them. On one of the evenings staying at my Uncle's (who is my Dad's middle brother), he and my Aunt were enjoying a truffle with our coffee and he asked whether or not my Dad was alive when I started making these. I told him I started the cake pops a few years after he had died, so no he never did. My Uncle said that that was a shame because he knew he would have loved them. That meant so much to me. Now, I have even more reason to enjoy making these cakes, and to keep on experimenting! (I think my husband will be pleased...)