Little Miss A turned four recently and at the suggestion of a friend we decided to have a “tea party” theme. It was a great opportunity for me to “tizzy” things up a little and go overboard on the “girly” stuff. After all, with three older brothers it has been a while since we’ve “done” pink!

I decided that I would only serve pink, red and white food to keep the tea party looking the part. That meant a table full of raspberry lollies, pink musk sticks, hand selected jelly beans, I am sure you know who ate the offending colours... me!

When it came to cooking for the party my mum made these gorgeous lolly cups

Lolly Cup Recipe

I set pink and red jelly in shot cups with spoons for easy serving, and I made my tried and true Greek Shortbread biscuits.

Greek Shortbread Recipe

Plus... I tried my hand at a Cake Pops.

I have to be honest; this is my second attempt at cake pops.  Last year for little A’s birthday I made a batch but I found them so fiddly I vowed never to repeat the exercise. Since then I have seen a lot of cute cake pops so I decided to give it another go and do things a little differently. They were definitely a lot easier using this method.

Ingredients:

1 Madera Cake

¼ cup condensed milk (you may need a little more)

1/4 cup cream cheese

lolly pop sticks

white chocolate

sprinkles

food colouring

Method:

Place the cake into a food processor and process with about ¼ cup of condensed milk and the cream cheese.

Allow the cake to come together into a “dough”, add a little more condensed milk if necessary.

Remove the “dough” and press onto a sheet of baking paper or between plastic wrap. Roll the dough out.

Cut shapes out of the dough and place onto a tray.

Gently press the lolly pop sticks into the shapes and put in the freezer overnight.

Warm the chocolate in a bowl and dip the cake pops into the chocolate to cover all sides. Allow the excess chocolate to fall back into the bowl. The chocolate can be tinted with food colouring. Immediately dip the cake pop into sprinkles or add lollies if required.

• note only take the cake pops out of the freezer as you are dipping in chocolate, they should be frozen when you work with them so that the chocolate sets quickly.

Place the cake pops in a container and refrigerate until required. Uses various cookie cutter shapes to make interesting cake pops. I made flowers and used Smarties as the centre.

For something a little different I melted dark chocolate to cover the star shaped Cake Pops.

I used a noodle box with a polystyrene filling to display make cake pops for the party.