Many Merry Cake Pops

A month ago I made these fabulous cake pops for Emmett's birthday. They are from the Bakerella website. They are SO much fun and the perfect size for the toddler mouth. A woman from church saw the ones I made for Emmett's birthday party and asked me to make 200 for the preschoolers at the Christmas Eve service. I said yes! Here are the many merry cake pops!

For those of you who are interested, I've reposted the recipe with some additional pictures.

Cake Pop Recipe

So I can not take credit for this. I got this recipe from Bakerella.com which I found through my friend, Marie. Click HERE for the Bakerella directions. The link is actually for the cupcake pops (slightly different look, a few extra steps) and she has a different set of directions for the cake lollipops but they don't include how to make the actual cake balls. So, I've consolidated her directions here and have included tips from my own (very novice) experience.

What you will need:

Boxed cake mix (or you can make from from scratch)

Jar of cream cheese frosting (or you can make it from scratch)

popsicle sticks (from Michaels or other craft store)

Candy melts (from Michaels) or Chocolate baker's squares or chocolate bark

sprinkles or other decorations

wax paper

styrofoam to dry and display them on

Directions:

MAKE and BAKE cake as directed on box

COOL completely

CRUMBLE cake into fine pieces. I put it into a food processor. Put all the finely chopped pieces into a large bowl.

ADD cream cheese frosting slowly with a large spoon or spatula until it's a moldable consistency. For me it was 1/2 - 3/4 of the frosting jar.

FORM into 1"-1.5" inch balls (when you dip in chocolate they will get bigger. The dip adds a surprising amount of diameter). Make sure to smooth over the cracks, otherwise they may

fall apart at the cracks.

PLACE balls onto a cookie sheet covered with wax paper

CHILL for a while - I chilled them overnight in the fridge. Bakerella says you can also place them in the freezer if you want it to go faster.

INSERT lollipop sticks into the balls

CHILL a bit longer. I think this might help the sticks stick better in the pops, not really sure.

MELT the chocolate or candy according to directions on package. It worked really well to melt about a custard dish full at a time. Here are a few observations based on my experience:

White chocolate bakers squares - really drippy and harder to work with. Easy to overcook the chocolate so melt it really slowly

Milk chocolate bakers squares - easy to work with. Even when dry the shell isn't super hard. It maintains it's shape fine though. I think it goes on a bit thicker than the candy melts.

Candy melts - I haven't found these in the grocery store, but had to go to Michael's to get these. Easy and smooth when melted. When they dry they are harder than the chocolate. Appx one bag of Candy melts per cake.

IF you see some of the balls cracking, don't dip these, they'll just break off the stick. Simply take them off the stick and collect the balls in a bowl, add a little more frosting then reform, and rechill then dip.

DIP pops in chocolate, spin in circular motion to let excess drip off

SPRINKLE sprinkles lightly on top (Once when I made these I covered the chocolate dipped ones in red sugar sprinkles. It looked really pretty!)

PLACE pops in styrofoam to dry. A few of them may drip so I'd recommend having one drying area and a different display area (or not caring if your display gets dripped on).

DISPLAY them however you want. I spray painted the styrofoam, tucked tissue around the foam and wrapped the styrofoam with wrapping paper.

Merry Christmas!