Owl always love you

I made this owl card after seeing someone's post on Pinterest, which is the American woman's new obsession.

I think it came out so cute! I got it all finished, but something was just missing, so then I added the little pink feet and voila! It wasn't quite as easy as it would have been if I could have used a cricuit, like the original pattern, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. One of my friend's is a Big Sister, and we're making Valentines again this year with her Little Sister and these will be perfect!

I was perusing the books at Target, and something caught my eye. Ok, you've busted me, I'm obsessed with owls. They are so cute, and they are everywhere! I saw a whole book of cake pops, with owl cake pops on the cover. I quickly paged through it and thought "I can do that!" I think I'll need more practice, and I can definitely see the advantage of dipping the pops on sticks instead of my method, which had some "special" results. I was also too lazy to go out and buy the right stuff to decorate them, so they could be a lot cuter. I'm going to make these again this weekend and play around with them more.

For those of you not on the cake pop/cake truffles bandwagon already, here's what I did:

Cake mix & ingredients to make it according to directions

1 can frosting

Chocolate chips

Almond bark

Bake a boxed cake mix according to directions. Doesn't matter what pan since you're going to crumble it up later. I did dark chocolate cake. Let it cool about 30 minutes (don't wait too long, or the next part won't work well). Cut it into hunks, then carefully crumble each hunk into a large mixing bowl. I say carefully because my cake was still really toasty, so don't burn yourself. I crumbled it as fine as I could by hand, then I used a metal spatula to short of chop it up more. You want it to be pretty small crumbs so you don't get lumpy truffles. While the cake crumbs are still warm, stir in one can of frosting (16 oz.), flavor of your choice. I did chocolate because I had it on hand. Since the cake is warm, the frosting sort of melts into it pretty easily, but keep stirring until you get a relatively smooth mixture, about the consistency of raw cookie dough. I used a cookie scoop to make even portions and then rolled each portion into a ball, about walnut size. I flattened the bottom a bit when I put them on the cookie sheet so they wouldn't roll all over. You might need two cookie sheets to fit them all, getting about 40-45 balls. Once they are all rolled, pop them in the freezer at least 30 minutes. I did about an hour, then set them out for a couple minutes before I dipped them. Melt about 6 oz. chocolate almond bark (could do regular white or the candy melts) over low heat. In fact, do it as low as possible to keep it melty and smooth, turning off the heat once it gets melty enough. Some of mine came out goofy because the chocolate was too hot (or not hot enough.) Carefully dip the bottom of each chocolate chip in the melted chocolate to use as a "glue" to stick it the cake ball. There's probably an easier way to do this-maybe use a spoon to dab it on? You need two for each owl, placing them for ears on top. Since the cake balls are really cold, the chocolate sets pretty fast. By the time I got all these done, the first ones were all set. Using a fork to rest the ball on, ears up, use a spoon to drizzle the melted chocolate over the whole ball, tapping gently to get excess off. Slide the covered cake ball onto a wax-paper lined cookie sheet. While the chocolate is still warm, decorate. I would recommend M & Ms for the eyes. I had lots of almonds around, so I used sliced almonds for the wings and slivered almonds for the beaks. I had spinkles in Christmas colors, so I did white and green eyes. Like I said, room for improvement. I'll have to post pictures once I improve :)