Cake pops are amazing, it’s cake on a stick covered in chocolate, yum, yes please! About a year ago I stumbled upon Bakerella’s website who aside from making all sorts of tasty treats is famous for her cake pops. Not only is the site full of great recipes Bakerella even has her own book on cake pops.
So after reading up on the topic of cake pops I thought I’d make my own, starting with some fun 4th of July cake pops, which I wrote about a while back. Since that time I’ve made cake pops a few more times, a few time ending in complete disaster. However, at the beginning of the semester I had some left over blue candy melts, and thought how about giving those cake pops another try.
We’ll seems practice makes perfect I only had two cake pops decapitate themselves. The blue cake pops were made with white cake and chocolate frosting, after dipping them I sprinkled them with white sprinkles. I also had some left over chocolate coffee cake, which I used to make a few chocolate covered caked pops. The chocolate pops were topped with colorful confetti sprinkles.. I took the pops to the first club meeting for our Graphics Honors society. The pops were a huge success!
I enjoyed how the cake pops turned out so much that about a month later when Joann’s was having one of their sales I stocked up on some candy melts, including orange candy melts. With Halloween not to far off, I thought I’d use the candy melts to make pumpkin shaped cake pops.
So, when the Graphic Arts Club decided to have a Pizza party last week, I such a kind Faculty sponsor, volunteered to bring the pumpkin cake pops …. in other words I needed some genie pigs and they were more than happy to help sample cake and chocolate.
There are a lot of cake pop kits now days, and I even bought a little pumpkin silicon mold, but through trail and error have found that just molding the cake pops by hand works the best.
I started by baking a devil food cake from a standard cake box mix. I notice that chocolate cake seems to have a little more gooey texture than white cake and seems to some how mold better. Perhaps, it maybe people just like chocolate better and that’s why I often am told the chocolate cake pops are better than the white cake pops, either way I decided to go with chocolate.
After baking the cake (doesn’t matter what shape) and letting it cool, I used my Kitchen Aid mixer to crumble the cake then I add about 3/4 container of frosting, I choose chocolate (what else). I mix the cake and frosting until it’s a dough like consistency.
Next I roll out the cake pops. Usually I roll out into perfect spheres, but since this time I was making pumpkins, I decided to give them a little notch on the bottom, so they had a more pumpkin shape. I sort of eyeball the size of each cake pop to make sure they are all about the same size. Once rolled I place them in the freezer for about 15 minutes.
While the cake pops are freezing, I melt the chocolate and get the sticks ready. I prefer using lollypop sticks, since they are a bit more manageable than the longer cake pop sticks, and because they a lot cheaper, I can get 50 lollypop sticks for about the same price of 20 cake pop sticks, so for me it makes sense to use the lollypop sticks.
Taking a few cake pops out of the freezer at a time I quickly dip the end of a stick into the chocolate and then into the bottom of the cake pop. After I’ve stuck the cake pops I returned them to the freezer and get a few more out to stick.
Once all cake pops have their stick in them I take a few out and begin the dipping process. Its best if your working with a small container so that the melted chocolate comes up to the top, ensuring coverage over the cake pop. Also, if the chocolate is a little too thick adding about a 1/2 table-spoon of shorting to it will help thin it out.
Right after dipping the cake pops into the orange chocolate I used green heart-shaped sprinkles to create a sort of leaf look at the top of the pumpkin. The sprinkle really added to the look and feel of the pumpkin cake pop.
I don’t really have a nice stand for the cake pops and only used some scrap styrofoam for a stand to let the cake pop chocolate harden. After they did harden I cut up some plastic wrap into individual squares so I could wrap each pop individually and placed them in a cake carrier.
I get about 48 cake pops for a single cake mix and like last time I only had 2 decapitated cake pops, so I feel like I’ve really gotten the hang of making these tasty treats.
The students loved the pops and they were all gone by the end of the meeting. I have decided though to make more of these pumpkin shaped treats for an up coming bake sale the clubs are hosting, hope they’re a hit at the sale as well.
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