Gluten-free Lemon Cake Pops
These gluten-free cake pops often find their way to my Christmas baking list. Reason number one is them being a bite-sized dessert, which I find very convenient when you are as passionate as I am about baking at Christmas time, and always make way too much. The second reason is they are a wonderful gift idea, especially if you have a loved one who can´t eat gluten. Other than that, they are also a refreshing lemon-flavored dessert in a sea of heavy, chocolatey desserts, and they look like little snowballs.
If you are looking for similar recipes, make sure you check out my Gluten-free Rum Balls. I even used the same sponge cake for making them so you can just double the batch of sponge cake and make both!
What you´ll need for these gluten-free lemon cake pops:
Sponge cake- I will write the recipe for the gluten-free sponge cake that I used if you want to bake it fresh to make these lemon cake pops. If you don´t feel like baking, you can use a store-bought sponge cake (gluten-free or a "normal" one).
Jam- I usually use the apricot jam for these gluten-free lemon cake pops. In my opinion, the apricot jam compliments the flavor of these cake pops very well. Also, it keeps them light-colored. If you decide to use some other jam, make sure it´s light-colored. Some other suggestions are peach, orange, or mandarine jam.
White chocolate- this recipe calls for white chocolate. The flavor of white chocolate goes really well with the lemon flavor and white chocolate makes these cake pops look like little snowballs. Also, coating these cake pops in white chocolate will give you that wonderful crunch.
Lemon juice- I used freshly squeezed lemon juice for this recipe. If you want, you can also add lemon zest for extra lemony flavor or substitute lemon juice for orange juice.
Other than that you will need some butter and powdered sugar, which are pretty self-explanatory, and of course, the ingredients for the sponge cake, if you decide to bake it yourself.
- 125 grams gluten-free flour mix for cakes
- 75 grams sugar
- 75 milliliters milk
- 2 small eggs
- 50 milliliters oil (any flavorless oil)
- 10 grams vanilla sugar
- pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 500 grams sponge cake (bought or self-made)
- 100 grams white chocolate
- 70 milliliters lemon juice
- 60 grams apricot jam
- 40 grams butter
- 300 grams white chocolate (for dipping)
- powdered sugar
- For the gluten-free sponge cake:
- Using a hand mixer beat the eggs with sugar and vanilla sugar until the batter becomes pale and fluffy. Add all the wet ingredients to it and mix until combined
- In another bowl combine flour with baking powder and salt.
- Now add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Add them slowly and mix thoroughly to avoid clumps.
- Choose a smaller baking tray. You want to have as much as possible of the soft inside part and minimize the crust. Pour it into the baking tray and bake at 180 C until golden.
- For the lemon cake pops:
- Take 500 g of the sponge cake. It is best to remove the crust and take as much as possible from the soft inside of the cake. Now crumble it into a bowl
- Melt chocolate and butter using a water bath or microwaving it in short intervals (so that the chocolate doesn´t burn)
- Add all the ingredients to the cake crumbles and combine them well with your hands. Once you´re done, put it for cooling in the fridge for cca 2 hours.
- Once the cake mixture has cooled, you can form the cake pops.
- Melt 300 g of white chocolate using a water bath (if the chocolate is too thick, you can add a Tbsp of vegetable oil).
- Prepare a bowl with powdered sugar.
- Dip each ball in chocolate and once it´s set dip it into powdered sugar to get a nice snowball look.
- Leave lemon cake pops to cool down so that the chocolate can set.