The stall selling christmas cake pops at the Great Market Hall in Budapest was not on the tour. Eszter, our guide, had six stops planned and she walked our group past it twice before she gave in and said fine, two minutes, you have to meet Márta.
It was a Tuesday morning in the middle of December and the hall smelled of paprika dust, warm lard and the sugar coming off a chimney cake iron somewhere behind us. Márta’s table was the width of a door. Red and green balls on paper sticks, standing upright in a block of foam she had wrapped in tinsel.
I bought two. I ate one standing at her table and one in the tram going back over the river, and that is the whole reason this recipe exists.
Márta and the Cake Scraps Above the Restaurant
Márta lived in the flat above a restaurant, and her grandson Bence cooked the dinner service downstairs. She told me this through Eszter, who translated with the slightly weary patience of someone who has heard the story before and still likes it.
Bence baked sheet cake for the restaurant’s plated desserts, and the trimmed edges and crusts came up the back stairs to her instead of going in the bin. She crumbled them, bound them, rolled them, dipped them. In December she dipped them in holiday colours and sold them at the market for pocket money and, I suspect, for the company.
What she showed me took about ninety seconds. She pressed a handful of the mixture in her fist, opened her hand, and let me feel it. Damp sand. Not dough, not paste. A pinch of it held a ball and nothing more.
Then she picked up a bare stick, dipped the tip half an inch into the melted coating, and pushed it into a chilled ball. The dab of coating sets inside the cake and glues the stick in. That one detail is the difference between a tray of pops and a tray of sticks with cake on the floor.
Where Christmas Cake Pops Actually Come From
I assumed, standing in a Hungarian market hall in winter, that I was eating something European and old. I was not. These are American and they are young.
The ancestor is the Southern cake ball, leftover cake scraps worked with frosting or syrup and rolled, a thrift habit that spread widely in the Great Depression era. Márta had arrived at the same idea on her own, which I find lovely. The stick, the hard candy shell and the decoration came from Angie Dudley, a graphic designer in Atlanta who blogged as Bakerella and posted her first cake pop on the first of February, 2008, after taking a cake decorating class.
It went around fast. Another blog reshared it, Martha Stewart had her on television a month later, and Starbucks put them in the pastry case around 2010. So the next time someone tells you cake pops are a Starbucks invention, they are off by a couple of years and one very determined blogger.
Also worth saying plainly. Christmas cake pops have nothing to do with British fruitcake, panettone or Japanese Christmas cake. No ritual, no ancestry. A 2008 novelty dessert wearing a Santa hat.
What I Used
- All-purpose flour, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt for a plain vanilla sheet cake
- Unsalted butter, softened properly, not microwaved into soup
- Three eggs and a cup of whole milk, both at room temperature
- A full tablespoon of pure vanilla extract
- Vanilla buttercream frosting, about three quarters of a cup, and you may not need all of it
- Red candy melts and green candy melts, twelve ounces each
- White candy melts for drizzling
- Thirty six-inch paper lollipop sticks
- Holiday sprinkles, nonpareils plus snowflake and star quins
- A couple of teaspoons of coconut oil, only if the coating needs thinning
Bringing the Budapest Pops Home
Nothing here needs importing, which is a relief after some of the things I have carried through customs. The candy melts and the snowflake quins come from a cake supply shop out in Van Nuys that has an entire wall of them and a man at the register who will tell you, unprompted, that you are buying the wrong red. The milk and butter I get at the Sunday farmers market. The vanilla is the one thing I spend real money on.
Use candy melts. I know chocolate sounds nicer. Melted chocolate thinned wrong runs off the ball, blooms grey and cracks on the stick, and a bag of chips will not set hard enough to hold a two-bite weight upright. Candy melts set firm and stay put. That is their entire job.
I baked the cake on a Sunday afternoon with a podcast on and the kitchen door open, because December here does that. Then I left it alone for a full hour. A warm cake steams inside the bowl and the crumb turns gummy, and gummy mixture is heavy mixture, and heavy mixture slides off the stick.
Trim the browned edges and the top crust off. Crumble the inside with your fingertips until there are no lumps left and it looks like fine sawdust. Then the frosting, two tablespoons to start, worked in with your hands and squeezed. Add more one spoonful at a time. Stop at damp sand. More frosting does not make better pops, it makes wet dense ones, and that is the single most common reason a tray fails.
Roll them smooth, chill an hour, dab and stick, chill ten more minutes. Then let them sit out five minutes before dipping. I ignored that step the first year. A frozen ball hitting warm coating sets with the shell shrinking over an expanding centre, and within a minute you watch a hairline crack open across the top of every single one. All eighteen of them. I have not skipped it since.
Dip straight down, lift straight out, one motion, no swirling. Tap your wrist against your other hand and the excess runs off in a thin sheet. Sprinkles go on immediately, while the coating is still glossy and tacky, then the pop goes upright into the foam block I keep in the hall closet purely for this week of the year.
Shapes and the Bits I Skip
Pinch a ball into a cone before the first chill and you have a Christmas tree or a Santa hat. Stack two and you have a snowman. I do the trees. The reindeer with pretzel antlers I have tried once and will not try again, mostly because the pretzels went soft overnight.
The white drizzle is the only decoration I actually think improves them rather than just complicating them. Spoon it on, or snip the corner off a zip-top bag.
They keep three days in a single layer at cool room temperature, or a week in the fridge. Let them come back to room temperature before serving or the shell sweats.
I make these every December now, and every December I think about a woman with a table the width of a door, selling her grandson’s cake trimmings in tinsel-wrapped foam. I never got her last name. I did get the damp sand, and honestly that was the thing worth carrying home.
Christmas Cake Pops
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour a 9x13 inch baking pan.
- Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Add the softened butter, eggs, milk and vanilla. Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes until smooth and thick.
- Spread the batter in the pan and bake 28 to 32 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely in the pan, at least 1 hour. A warm cake will steam and turn the mixture gummy.
- Trim away the browned edges and top crust. Crumble the cake into a large bowl with your fingertips, or pulse it in a food processor, until the crumb is fine and even with no large pieces left.
- Add 2 tablespoons of frosting and work it in with your hands. Keep adding frosting a spoonful at a time, squeezing the mixture, until it just holds together like damp sand and a pinch stays in a ball. Stop there. Most of a 9x13 cake needs about 1/2 to 3/4 cup.
- Scoop level 1.5 tablespoon portions and roll each between your palms into a smooth ball slightly smaller than a golf ball. Place them on a parchment-lined sheet. You should get about 30.
- Chill the balls in the refrigerator for 1 hour, or the freezer for 15 minutes, until firm but not frozen solid.
- Melt the red candy melts in a deep narrow bowl in the microwave at 50 percent power in 30 second bursts, stirring between each, until smooth. Stir in a little coconut oil only if the coating is too thick to flow off a spoon in a ribbon.
- Dip the tip of a lollipop stick about 1/2 inch into the melted coating, then push it straight into a chilled ball until it reaches halfway through. Repeat with the rest and return them to the refrigerator for 10 minutes so the coating sets and glues the stick in place.
- Take the pops out and let them stand at room temperature for 5 minutes. Dipping them ice-cold cracks the shell.
- Holding the stick, lower a pop straight down into the coating until the ball is fully submerged, then lift it straight out in one motion. Do not swirl or stir. Tap your wrist gently against your other hand so the excess drips off evenly.
- While the coating is still wet, scatter sprinkles over the pop, then stand it upright in a styrofoam block to dry. Work one pop at a time so the sprinkles stick.
- Repeat with the green candy melts for the remaining pops, reheating the coating briefly if it begins to thicken.
- Melt the white candy melts and drizzle them over the set red and green pops with a spoon or a snipped corner of a zip-top bag. Let everything dry fully upright, about 20 minutes, before serving or packing.