Coffee Cake Pops

Happy Mother's Day everyone! I have been wanting to do this recipe for a while now and it was very simple! For this recipe, you will need:

• 1 box Betty Crocker French Vanilla cake mix
• 1 packet Starbucks Via Instant Coffee (either Colombian roast or Italian Roast)
• 1 Hershey Bar or a handful of Hershey's Kisses
• (or) 1 Packet of Hot Cocoa Mix
  
  
  

Prepare the cake batter as instructed. The box will tell you to use 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, but I only use 2 tbsp. Mix the Starbucks Via with a 1/2 cup of Warm water until it dissolves. Add it to the cake batter.  Add the additional 1/2 cup of cold regular water (the batter needs 1 full cup). The batter will turn brown and smell like real coffee :-)

Bake the cake as instructed and construct your cake pops as usual.  I coated my cake balls with regular white candy coating. However, I heard somewhere you can mix a shot glass of Coffee Liquor to the candy coating as well.  I didn't try it with this batch as the cake balls give plenty of coffee flavor without any additional help from the candy coating.

You can sprinkle your cake pops with whatever you'd like.  I chose to use chocolate shavings from a Hershey bar.  Another cool choice would be a sprinkling of Hot Cocoa Mix powder.

These cake pops really have a distinct coffee flavor and were really yummy!

(I was a little lazy and didn't feel like re-displaying the cake pops on my cake pop stand so here they are, ready to go in a Tupperware).