Wednesday, January 19, 2011

The Super Epic Cake Pop Saga

I decided a few weeks ago that Noelle was going to have a bird themed 1st birthday. Not creepy black birds...but cute little whimsical birds.

I decided last weekend that I needed to find a way to make a bird-like Cake Pop (the Bakerella variety). How hard could it be??

Well...I took on the task, starting on Sunday. I thought it would be a simple thing to do. Not so much.

First, go to Bakerella's site and look at the main recipe. Then you can browse around at all the amazing cake pops she has made. Go ahead. But make sure you come back here! Bakerella's Red Velvet Cake Balls

So, I made the first batch-o-balls. They tasted great, but they were too big and they didn't stay on the sticks very well. When I dipped them in the chocolate, they were lumpy. I also made the mistake of letting them dry by sitting on a cookie sheet with waxed paper. This created a flat top on each cake pop. Yucky. But...like I said...they tasted great!

I harvested some advice from Facebook from people who have done this before, but they helped me get through some of my issues.

Here's a list to help you if you decide to do this. This second batch was a white cake with cream cheese frosting and then white candy melts dyed light yellow.

1. Make sure you have the right consistency of the cake mix and frosting. I really mixed it will and then let it kind of sit out for a little bit, which made it get a little tacky and rolled much easier.

2. Make the balls about the width of a quarter. Do not make the balls too big!!!

3. Dip the stick in a little bit of the candy melts first (about a 1/2"), and then stick them in the balls. This will help them stick.

4. Refrigerate (or freeze) for several hours.

5. Add a little oil to the candy melts to make it a little thinner so it doesn't tug on the cake ball and make it lumpy.

6. Make sure you put the candy melts in a deep enough cup so that you can fully dunk the cake ball.

7. Twist and tap the cake pop once it is coated, getting the excess off.

8. Stick the cake pops in a block of styrofoam so that they can dry standing up.

9. For the faces of my birds, I used some shaped sprinkles and some black frosting dye. I used the end of a pop stick to get some candy melt on the tip and then use it as glue for the beak and feet. I used the end of a pop stick to make the eyes, too. Granted, I haven't really figured out which face looks more like a bird. Some of these look like birds, some look like crazy clowns, others look like rabbits, and some look like hamsters. Meh. I will get better.

Praise the LORD I did not just decide to make these for the first time the weekend of Noelle's birthday! I would say you need to allow yourself at least a full day to get these made. They are time consuming, but if you put in the extra work, they look pretty cute!

The best part is that they taste as good as they look...or in my case, they taste better than they look!

1 comment:

  1. BIRDS! Ashley-Bird! You KNOW I love this idea.

    The cake balls look great!

    ReplyDelete