Cake Pops, Anyone?

Cake pops are amazing.

Little beautiful balls of cakey goodness.   Frosting.  Cake.  Sugar.  Cake.  Cake.  Cake.  Cake. Cake.

Huh?

Sorry...cake coma.  It happens.

Isn't this a beautiful cake pop?  Cake on a stick.  Someone was using their thinker.

I just realized my choice of colors for this particular cake ball was very UNI-ish.  Or Vikings.  Or Iowa covered in purple sprinkles.  Hmmmm.

Drippy yellow sugary goodness.   Surrounded by glitter.   Yay.

Had enough yet?

But wait!  There's more!

So I found the recipe for these awesome fabulous genius incredible cake pops at Bakerella's website.  It's pretty much full of awesome desserts.  If you're doing a cleanse, or perhaps a 24 Day Challenge, do not visit this website.

Just.  Don't.  Do.  It.

But if you have a hankering for cake pops, and a couple free hours, here's the steps.

First, bake a cake.  From a box.  Easy peezy lemon squeezy.  Let it cool overnight.

In the morning (or after a 10 hour shift at work, if your a nut job), cut the cake into fourths.  Four pieces.  Quarters.  Fourth it.  Whatever.  Take a fourth out of the pan in a big ol' chunk, break it in half (or are we at eighths now?) and rub the two pieces together, crumbling the cake into a fine pile of cake crumbiness.

Get out a jar of frosting.  Any kind.  Chocolate goes nice with chocolate cake.  If I could buy ketchup flavored frosting, I would use that.  But you're not me.

ANYways, scoop three-fourths of the jar into the tub of cake crumbies.  Mix it up.  Use your hands, don't be shy.

I hope you washed your hands first.  I didn't.  Muahahahahhahahahaha. 


Here we go, cake-frosting delicious cake ball batter dough.

How'd that spoon get in there?  I used my unwashed hands, I swear.

If you own a miniature ice cream scoop, now would be a great time to get that baby out.   Scoop up a ball of dough, roll it gently in your hand to create a ball of cake about an inch in diameter.   The more perfectly round the ball, the more perfectly round your cake pop will be.

Place it on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper.  Admire your first cake ball.  It will soon grow into a beautiful cake pop.  Fabulous work.

Now roll up your sleeves, you've only got 47 more cake balls to roll.

Ignore the turd-looking pieces of cake in the front.   I attempted pharmaceutically shaped cake pops.  They didn't work out.  There will be no Adderall cake pops in the Clark home.  Sad.

Once finished forming all the cake balls, pop them in the freezer for 15 minutes.  Or you could put them in the fridge for a few hours, but what's the point of doing things the hard way?

While the cake balls are chillin' (HA, get it? I kill me) start melting your candy coating.

Hobby Lobby has a bazillion colors in a couple different flavors.   The tan in the back is peanut butter...the rest that I used are vanilla.  I decided to use a blue coating halfway through my decorating, so he didn't get to be included in this shot.

I didn't take pictures of the remaining shots, mainly because I was too excited about my cake-popping.

After your candy coating is melted according to the instructions on the bag, and your cake balls have been in the freezer for 15 minutes, grab a couple cake balls.  Put the remainder in the fridge to keep them cool.

I forgot to mention, you should have assembled all your supplies:  sprinkles, do-dads, 6 inch sucker sticks, edible glitter and such.  Also, a chunk of styrofoam is helpful to stick the pops in while they dry.

Dip the sucker stick into the candy coating one-half inch.  Stick that end of the stick into the cake ball.  Imagine the end of the stick being half to three-fourths of the way through the ball.   Let that sit for 15-30 seconds until the candy coating dries...it's like candy glue!  This keeps that little cake ball from falling off the stick when you dip.  You can't become a beautiful cake pop if you're a cake ball with no candy glue!

Dip the cake ball straight into the candy coating (PS...you should have melted the candy coating in a deep bowl...you need enough depth that you can completely submerge your happy little cake ball) until the candy coating has completely covered the cake ball and reached the visible part of the stick. You might have to tilt the cake ball a bit - that's fine! - but do not swirl.  Swirling is bad.  Swirling gets cake crumbs in your candy coating.

Not cool.

Pull the cake pop (notice it's officially a cake pop now!!! YAY) straight out of the bowl and allow the excess candy coating to drip off.  Drip drip drippity drip.

Help it along by tapping the wrist of the hand that is holding the pop.  We don't want one side of the pop to have more coating that the other...it'll get a complex.  And that's sad.

Candy coating is a very finnicky thing (how the $#%# do you spell finnicky??)...if it's too runny when you turn the pop right side up, it will drip down the stick.  If you wait too long, it'll dry and you'll have to re-dunk to get the sprinkles to stick...then you have a fat cake pop that might fall in the candy coating.

You'll figure it out.  I did.

These are the first little cake pops I made!  Notice the yellow spot on the styrofoam?  I may have turned a cake pop right side up and stuck it in the styrofoam before it's coating was ready to stay put.  Whoops.

Wilberforce made one cake pop.  That was all he could handle.  He's drizzling peanut butter coating on his cake pop here.  He was very proud.

Happy little cake pops.

His finished masterpiece.  

 This one was a misfit.  He was a problem child.  He needed to go to cake pop time-out.  So we ate him.

Cake pop decorating is very scientifical.  

The wrist tap method. 

Hi cake pops.  

Juuuust in case you couldn't see the sprinkles before - here they are!

This is my setup for cake pop photography.  Will thinks I'm ridiculous.  I kind of do, too. 

I found some little baggies at Hobby Lobby...don't want to get dust or germs on our precious gems.  

A styrofoam cube, some ribbon, and wah-lah!

 All ready to go to work to be eaten by the girls!

 This cake pop was another casualty.  I tried to hard to push him into the cube and the stick popped out the top of the pop and bag.

 Wilberforce was really sad about the poor cake pop.

 But not too sad.

 Ok, so he was really quite happy about it.

Goodbye forever, cake pop. 

Overall, the cake pops were a success.  The girls at work loved them!  If I hadn't been on day 21 of the 24 Day Challenge, I'm sure I would have loved a bunch of them, too.  

I shall make them again.  

Visit Bakerella's website for more ideas on cake pop decorating...soccer balls, pigs, tea pots, aliens, monsters, lady bugs and more!!