Belbake have reconciled me with cake pops !

I hate cake pops ! I've tried to make them on two occasions, once from scratch and once from a kit, and both times they were a disaster, refusing to stay on the sticks and/or falling apart. But you know what it's like when you go shopping with kids ! They spotted a kit for Orange Cake Pops in the reduced aisle of our local Lidl and wanted to buy it so, warning them that they're always catastrophic, I threw it in the basket !

Inside the box, you get a bag of orange flavoured cake mix (you need to add water, oil and an egg), some lollipop sticks, a bag of chocolate coating to melt down and a bag of sprinkles. 

You put the contents of the bag in a bowl with the water and oil.

Crack in an egg.

Mix it all up until it's smooth and creamy (we had a lick of the bowl and it has a beautiful orange flavour) then pour into a cake tin and bake for half an hour. 

The result was a rather lovely orange sponge cake but it's a shame really because, once it's cooled, you have to smash it to bits ! After mixing the cake crumbs in with some softened butter, you get a malleable cakey mush. (Ignore the chocolate in the bowl - I was reusing a bowl we'd just made chocolate brownies in !)

You roll it into balls then put it in the fridge for half an hour to firm up.

Put the sachet of chocolate in a bowl of hot water to melt then you're ready to do the potentially disastrous bit ! I couldn't get any photos of the next stages because my hands were tied up. You dip the stick in the chocolate then into a ball of cake crumb. Next you dip the whole thing in the sachet of melted chocolate, let the excess drip off then roll it in the sprinkles. (This was Pierre's job and we ran out of sprinkles so I had to add extras.)

An upside down egg box with small holes stabbed in each section is perfect for standing the cake pops up as they set.  

And guess what - they worked perfectly ! They were fun to make, tasted great and actually stayed in one piece and on the sticks. The kids loved them so I've no doubt we'll be making them again - this would be a great way of using up stale cake (not that we usually have much of that lying around !).