My daughter wanted to make her own cake pops, but ended up with a flop instead.

By Dulce Zamora

Thursday, April 16, 2020 — My 10-year-old daughter, Jasmine, made cake pops for Easter, using her own recipe. These morsels have almonds, peanut butter, pretzels, Oreos, melted chocolate, and salt inside, and they’re topped with cocoa nibs and rainbow sprinkles.

I am not a big fan of cake pops, because I don’t like things that are too sweet. But these were tasty and packed with satisfying texture – kind of like biting into a brownie, biscotti, and a Snickers bar at the same time (sans the caramel). Jasmine said she saw a recipe for cake pops, and decided she’d experiment with her own, using ingredients she liked that were in-house.

The road to these cake pops was not an easy one. Jasmine screamed and cried a lot, especially when the white chocolate tinted with light green food coloring turned out a gloopy mess. She had melted a white chocolate candy bar, and the oil separated in the cooking process. So, she scrapped it and heated up dark chocolate baking chips instead. The second batch was easier to handle.

Disasters happen as often in our kitchen as our Instagram-worthy successes. Actually, I quite like the fiasco stories even though they don’t feel good while you’re in them. The challenges add depth and sweetness to the end product. So, what you have here are cake pops packed with persistence, patience, and creativity, and topped with hundreds and thousands of beads of resilience — because you know when you have those tiny balls of colored sprinkles in the house, you end up finding them everywhere!

Lessons in Lockdown #2: Failure is often an essential ingredient in success. It means we’ve tried something, and it didn’t work out. So, when we try again, we know what not to do. When we finally figure out something that works, it makes our achievement all the more gratifying. Blunders add flavor and sophistication to the overall concoction. What failures have seasoned your accomplishments? Please share in the comments. Maybe we can inspire each other.

© 2020 Windswept Wildflower