Flour Child: Cake Pops -- Practice Makes Cute!

Me and Bakerella at her book signing in Toronto

So my inspiration behind this whole blog is Bakerella. I have been reading her blog for years now – I love the way she writes and her totally creative way of decorating these candy covered crumbled cake more commonly known as cake pops. And, now that Starbucks has them, they are quite commonly known. But I can attest to the fact that Bakerella brought them to many peoples attention including mine – and I’m going to try to explain the various processes in making your very own cake pops (and of course, if I don’t mention it my husband, and Director of Marketing, will kill me, you can always contact me to order anything on this blog including cake pops.)

As far as I can figure it out so far there are 3 ways to make cake pops:

1. - with a box cake mix and canned frosting

2. - crumbled Oreo cookies

3. - your favorite ultra moist cake which may or may not need some cream cheese icing to help it stick together (this is what I do and my favorite chocolate cake recipe does not need any icing as it is so moist)

I am going to describe the process with the assumption that you have baked a cake (box or not – there are no judgments here at Flour Child) and may or may not need frosting to help with moisture. If you are using Oreo cookies you crumble the cookies in a food processor and, I hear, they stick together for a no bake solution. No matter once you have your crumbs the process is the same.

Materials Needed to Cake Pop:

cake and maybe frosting

candy chocolate melts – for this project I used pink and chocolate

multi-coloured sprinkles

M&M’s – for this project I used the pink breast cancer M&M’s

lollipop sticks

2 or 3 empty egg cartons

styrofoam block

Bake your cake and crumble it with your hands or in a food processor.

Shape your cake pop – this tutorial is making a cupcake shaped cake pops but you could also make a simple ball and decorate it a kazillion different ways. NOTE: If your cake does not stick together easily, you may need to add some frosting to the crumbled cake. Better to add the frosting a little at a time because you really don’t want the cake pop to be too heavy.

TIP: You can shape the cake pops and freeze them for another time as a cake may make up to 50 cake pops and you may not need all of them.

TIP: I bought this My Little Cupcake gizmo that shapes the crumbs into a little cupcake. I like this a lot because it really helps with size – even if I’m not doing a cake pop that looks like a cupcake it sorta ensure a consistent size which is really important. But, the other day I was cruising around the internet and saw that people were using meatball scoop makers to do the same thing. Then I was thinking of my ice cream scoops I use for making perfect size cookies (I have 2 different sizes) and I think that would work as well. Size, well probably really weight, is really important when making cake pops because you don’t want them to be too heavy or you will end up with a lot of cake pops that fall off the stick (or as I call them VERY tasty rejects). I used to have this happen all the time but I think practice and the gizmo really helps.

Place your shaped cake pops on a wax papered cookie sheet in the refrigerator.

Place the chocolate candy melts in a double boiler to melt the chocolate. You could also microwave the chocolate but I always burn chocolate this way so I use a double boiler. For this project I worked first in the dark chocolate and then in the pink.

Once the chocolate is melted, let it cool slightly before dipping.

TIP: I usually work taking 3 or 4 cupcakes out of the refrigerator.

One at a time, dip the bottom of the cupcake in chocolate (dip just until the top of the cupcake), insert the lollipop stick about half way into the cupcake and place the cupcake in the egg carton lollipop stick up to dry.

TIP: I usually put about the egg carton in the refrigerator to help the chocolate cool but you don’t have to as they air dry really quickly.

Melt the pink candy melts in the same way you did the chocolate ones and don’t forget to temper the chocolate for a few minutes before

Dip the cupcake tops into the tempered pink chocolate – you may wish to double dip to make the cupcake tops pop.

Sprinkle with multi-colour sprinkles.

Stick lollipop stick in a foil covered styrofoam block to allow the cake pop to dry completely. I cover in foil so that the drips are easy to clean up.

I put these cupcake pops in floral Styrofoam covered in foil paper in a rectangular vase and think they look super cute.