Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Cake Pops!

Aunt Elaine gave Annabeth Bakerella's book on Cake Pops for Christmas, after which Annabeth kept asking when oh when could we buy some cake mix and frosting and MAKE them.

So, when Michael's had coupons for New Year's day (50% off one item, 25% off your entire purchase) we were THERE purchasing candy melts, lollipop sticks, styrofoam blocks and sprinkles (also Sculpey, which was on sale, and n American Girl scrapbook we nabbed at 75% off -- wow, do we have some serious crafting to do in 2011).

And finally, FINALLY, we got around to making the cake, letting it cool, then mixing it with the frosting.



If you decide to make some of these I'd strongly recommend freezing at least half of the cake for later. It was really tedious to make the entire cake into shapes.



The more oblong ones are shaped like snowmen. True confession: half of these are still in the refrigerator uncoated.

The rest were dipped in melted candy melts


and sometimes sprinkled with sugar.





Then we switched colors:







Used both colors of melts on some


Tried out the sugar pearls on some. By the way, when you eat these the pearls pop off and go bouncing across the floor.


Got out the edible markers we bought at Michael's.


(The pink one is the first one Annabeth made -- she wanted it to be special.)

Hey, look -- it looks like a gathering of Andorians with skin problems, including a bunch of Aenar!




You know what?



After all of this we've decided that Cake Pops are an acquired taste. They look cool, it's an amazing project, but, wow, what a lot of sugar in a tiny little area. The fact that none of us really like candy melts takes away from the Cake Pops experience. In future batches we might try thinning the candy melts down so there's a smaller candy melt to cake ratio. Or have a well-defined plan for foisting the finished product off on other people.

8 comments:

Heather Dawn said...

These came out super cute! Great job.

Bridgett said...

Those are really cute but I could see the intense sugary-ness being a bit over the top.

Say, was that your husband in the gaggle of dance dads who helped me with my dead battery on Tuesday? If so, thank him again for assistance.

km said...

These are really fun! Do you like dark chocolate? You could melt down chocolate chips (I like Martha Stewart's ganache recipe) and dip them in that like you would a truffle. It's way less sweet.

Gail said...

Km, Annabeth doesn't like chocolate, and this was mostly her project. I, too, had thought some chocolate could cut the sweetness if we could find something the correct consistency. I think Wilton's has flavoring oils that we could add to the candy melts -- maybe we can come up with something that way.

Bridgett, Wednesday was the first time we were anywhere near the studio in about a month, so we missed Tuesday's excitement. Sorry to hear about your battery, though -- hope it isn't an ongoing problem.

Tara said...

I wondered about these... thanks for the heads-up. The idea is kind of cute, but the whole process seems a bit fiddly. Good luck with future cake-pop endeavors!

Trish said...

I so want to try to make these! I think I will make them upside down with the stick up in the air with a liner....maybe next weekend. I will let you know how they go.

Anonymous said...

Try using CandyQuik. It comes in chocolate and vanilla and you can get it at most grocery stores. I find it tastes MUCH better than candy melts.

Anonymous said...

Try to use the Babycakes Cake Pop maker (bed bath or kohls). It makes actual cake balls instead of the gooey sugary style making them by hand with frosting.