Cake Pops for the Home Baker

This is the tale of birthday treats with a twist. The twist is good, but the twist comes with some serious side notes. And here they are.

Pros:

• No worries about how the cake turns out. You're just going to smash it to bits anyway.
• Recipe is super simple: one baked cake, one can of premixed frosting smashed together in a bowl, a few bags of candy coating
• Easy to eat for kids - less mess than cupcakes, brownies or cake
• Perfect treat for easy transport
• Fun, fun, fun!!

Cons:

• Super simple meets super messy! Making balls by hand was a m-e-s-s!
• Getting those cake balls onto sticks was easy enough, getting them to stay... not so much.
• Maybe it was just me, but it took much more candy coating to frost these than I expected which turned out to be the biggest expense.
• Individual wrapping was necessary for taking them to school (in my opinion). This also added to the expense.

Bottom line: It would have been much cheaper to buy something than to bake these. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't have looked this cute:

So if you like the end result in spite of the Pros and Cons list, here's how I made it work:

1. Bake your cake and crumb in a bowl. Add one can of frosting of your choice and mix well.

2. Form cake and frosting mixture into balls in the desired size (mine were about 2 inches in diameter).

3. The balls got more perfectly round once formed on the stick. Once on the stick, they'll need to freeze for at least one hour.

4. After freezing, you'll need to melt the candy coating in a double-boiler. One at a time, dip and then gently roll the cake pop in the melted candy. Rest them on a wax or parchment paper to harden.

5. Finally, wrap each individual cake pop with a lollipop bag and tie with a ribbon or twist tie. I converted a sturdy shoe box into the vehicle for delivering the pops. I wrapped the box with pretty birthday paper and then punched holes slightly smaller than the size of the sticks.

 

We make birthday dreams come at our home. And cake pops can be done by the home baker!