Handmade Cake Pops

I wont bore you all with the details of how to make a cake - its simple and the directions are on the back of the box - just in case - there is anyone here who has not made a cake before.

So go ahead, make your cake, and while its still warm after coming out of the oven, come on back and i'll give you the next steps.

So here is your work list of what you need:

Cake mix
frosting (canned or home made)
pop sticks
parchment paper
melting chocolates
Sprinkles or non-perils
a piping bag or ziploc baggie
mini cupcake liners

ok, so when I make my cake pops, while the cake is still warm, I start to crumble it as fine as I can so that there are no clumps or hard cake pieces - this will keep your balls from being clumpy in the long run.

After I have crumbled into smallest pieces possible, I add about 3/4 a can of frosting - its really up to you the flavor, but I try to keep my combos together. For these, I did a red velvet cake and a cream cheese frosting.

The frosting gives a nice smooth moist feel when you eat the cake pop, one thing you don't get when you use the pop maker!

I bought these pink and white stripe stiff paper straws from amazon, but simple white pop sticks from the craft store are fine too - its up to what you need.

After the frosting has been mixed in, take about 1 tablespoon of cake mix, and roll into a ball in your hand. I keep a moist piece of paper towel near by to wipe my hands and keep them moist so that the cake doesn't stick to my fingers.

I put the balls on parchment paper and pop them into the freezer for about 2 hours. This sets them nicely and makes the stick insertion really easy.

Once you have your cake balls have been chilled, prepare your chocolates. You will need a small amount to use with the stick insertion so do this one first.

HINT: If you add a little cooking oil to the chocolate as your are melting it, it makes the chocolate really smooth and the perfect consistency for cake pops!

How I get my sticks in, is insert the stick first, withdraw and then dip into the chocolate, swirl, tap and re-insert into the cake pop. This will (mostly) get chocolate into the pop so that when chilled, the chocolate hardens and doesn't let the stick fall out.

Do this for all the pops and then put back into freezer for about 30 minutes.

Prepare your other chocolate colors in microwave safe dishes - its easier to use a "tall" container when you have to dip the whole pop in to cover.

When covering the pops, you can use a spoon to help cover the pop, or use a deep glass to make sure you get coverage. tap GENTLY and rotate pop on the edge of glass to get off any excess. Place back on parchment paper when you have done all of them, and put back into freezer for another 20 minutes.

Now, if you want to do basic chocolate covered cake pops, you can stop here - just take from freezer, put in fridge until its time to eat or display. If you want to do some fancy scmancy stuff, here are some ideas...

the above I made to look like "leopard" spots (kinda sorta, maybe?) and just used a ziplock baggie to do my chocolate dots and white accents. 

The other was a simple white with sprinkles that I added about a minute after I coated it.

These ones I used white non-perils and just put a little warm chocolate on them just in the places I wanted them to go.

The other is white chocolate with a zebra stripe of chocolate.

Ta-da - here they are at the baby shower, which was a pink and black zebra theme!