Banana Cake Pops with Honey Cinnamon Buttercream: Pokeball Cake Pops!

Ingredients:
-1 very large, very VERY ripe banana
-3/4 C Swan's Down Cake Flour
-3/4 tsp baking powder
-1/4 tsp baking soda
-1/2 tsp cinnamon
-1/4 tsp ginger
-Pinch of salt
-1/3 C milk
-1/2 tsp white vinegar
-1/3 C granulated sugar
-2 TB packed brown sugar
-2 TB vegetable oil
-1 tsp almond extract
-White chocolate, red chocolate, regular chocolate, white round sprinkles
Filling:
-1/2 stick butter
-1/4 C high quality honey (go for locally sourced!)
-1 C powdered sugar (more or less to achieve desired texture)
-1/4 tsp cinnamon (more to taste)

Mix the milk and vinegar together and let it sit while you mix up other ingredients.  Put the extremely ripe banana in your mixer bowl with both sugars, cinnamon, ginger, and oil. 

Next, add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, almond, and milk mixture.  Mix on a medium speed until well combined.

Heat up your cake pop maker and spray with cooking spray.  Fill each well with about a tablespoon or so of batter (needs to fill up the bottom side of the well).  I like to use the smaller cookie scoop/melon baller to fill the wells quickly.

Bake about 5 minutes.  Sit on a wire rack to cool. 

For easy filling, I like to cut mine in half, stick the stick through the bottom half.  Then I pipe in some icing or filling.  For the filling, you want it to be stiff enough to not run over the sides but soft enough to add moisture to the cake.  I mixed mine with a spoon, there was nothing to it.  Stick the top half on, sit it on a plate, and freeze the pops for about 20 minutes or so.

Melt the white chocolate and dip the cake pops.  Shake off the excess and put them in foam or a stand to dry.  Do the white on all the pops first.

Next, melt red chocolate, adding in a tablespoon or so of oil once it is melted if you need it to be more smooth.  Dip the top half of the cake pops in and return them to a stand.  After all of those are dipped, use a knife or a piping bag to string chocolate around the pop, making a round spot in the front for the sprinkle.  Put the sprinkle on and return the cake pop back to the stand to dry completely.

I played Pokémon a LOT as a kid.  When I got my wisdom teeth out (2 cut out, 4 other teeth pulled, braces put on 3 days later) I logged about 40 hours on a Pokémon game in one week.  I didn't even need pain meds, haha, I was far too distracted.  But a distracted champion.

Anyway, ever since I got the cake pop maker I knew I would eventually make me some cake pops like this.  I thought about making a lot of game themed things (Tetris, PacMan, Mario, etc) but I ended up just sticking with these. 

No worries, I graduate with a Master's next summer, there will always be more parties that need a theme ;).

These were super delicious and tasted just like amazing banana bread.  They will certainly be in my bake sale rotation the next time one is coming up.

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