I absolutely love making healthy meals and recipes, but my one true love is baking. I love creating healthy versions of delicious classic recipes, or making vegan versions of traditionally dairy and egg heavy baked goods. Sometimes these vegan version will end up being healthy, and sometimes they are just delicious, fun, and creative. These Valentine's Day Red Velvet Cake Pops are just that.

A really awesome vegan hack is that you can make just about any boxed cake mix vegan. Boxed cake mix is already vegan. What makes the cake not vegan is adding dairy and eggs. Instead of adding what it says on the box, add 1 cup of dairy free milk and 1 cup of unsweetened applesauce. That's literally it, and you can't even taste the difference 🙂

There are actually a couple of different ways that you can make a vegan cake from boxed cake mix. I found them all on Peta's website here. I played around with some of their suggestions and made my own. I'll will have to message them about it so they can add it to the list LOL.

What you need to make your Valentine's Day Red Velvet Cake Pops

1 box of red velvet cake mix
1 cup dairy free milk
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
2-3 tablespoons of vanilla frosting (store bought is also vegan)
vegan white chocolate
fun sprinkles to decorate the cake pops with

Making your Valentine's Day Red Velvet Cake Pops

Making cake pops is super fun and easy! The first thing that you want to do is make your cake. To do this, combine the cake mix, dairy free milk, and applesauce and combine the ingredients well. You can use a hand mixer, fork, or whisk.

Grease a pan and pour the cake batter in. Then bake according to the box instructions.

Once the cake has baked, leave it out to cool for 20-30 minutes.

Then, use your fingers to break apart the entire cake until it is all crumbs.

Once you have crumbled the cake, add 2-3 tablespoons of vanilla frosting. I added about 2, but you want to add enough so that the mixture is stable enough to roll into balls. You might have to add more or less depending on how your cake has baked.

I like to add about 2 tablespoons, mix it well into the cake, try rolling a small chunk into a ball, and if it sticks nicely together I am done. If it is still crumbly, I add a little more frosting.

Don't add too much frosting because you don't want your cake pops to be too gooey and unable to stay in the shape of a ball!

After you've made the perfect cake pop mixture, form your cake pops into balls about 1 inch in diameter. I like to refrigerate mine here for about 10-15 minutes while I am melting the chocolate. This gives them a chance to cool and harden a bit more.

Putting it all together

Next, you want to melt your vegan white chocolate. You can do this in the microwave by putting the chocolate in a microwavable bowl and popping it in the microwave for 30 second increments. I love baking with chocolate, so I actually have a chocolate melting machine that makes this process super easy.

Line a pan with some parchment paper or foil before you start covering the cake pops in chocolate, as this can be a pretty messy step. It is really hard to clean off hardened chocolate.

Once your chocolate is melted, take out the cake pops and one by one, dip them entirely in the melted chocolate. Swirl them around and then use a fork to remove them and place them on the baking sheet.

Do this for each cake pop.

Feel free to drizzle the remaining chocolate on top of the cake pops and add sprinkles!

Finally, refrigerate the cake pops until the chocolate has hardened.

For another Valentine's Day inspired recipe, try this vegan dark chocolate mousse. For another delicious vegan dessert, try these vanilla cupcakes.