Kelsey Adventures!: October 2011

Before I start this, I want to list all the things you'll need - I should have taken a picture of it all, but I did not.
You'll need: cake mix (any), ingredients to make cake, cake pan, a knife, a can of frosting (more on that below), candy coating wafers (in any flavor/color you want), wafer dye (like food coloring, but specifically for the wafers), various bowls/plates to mix/hold stuff, lollipop sticks, sprinkles (any), something to hold the pops upright (I got Styrofoam from the craft store), patience, and clean hands!

This is a cake pop - say hello! These are both easy and fun to make. Let me show you how.

Hi! Don't I make you feel all warm and bubbly inside?

And let me warn you now... These pictures were taken on my iPhone. They look super awesome on my phone's beautiful screen, but don't translate all that well to a computer. Bear with me.

So here we go!

You can use ANY cake mix you want. This is Funfetti! It's so fun. Anyway, mix it up and get that sucker into the oven. Prepare, mix, and bake it from the directions on the box - nothing fancy yet.
Yes, that is a bottle of extra virgin olive oil. I wasn't even sure if this was going to work out because I had no idea if you can use evoo in cake mix. I took advice from an eleven-year-old boy I was babysitting and just did it. (It turned out just fine.)

So here's the cake. I know it's ugly - that's because I felt the need to a.) cut the corner out as soon as it came out of the oven and eat said corner, and b.) peel off the weird, flaky top that the cake created.

Don't be like me, please.

So now you want to take a knife (I used a plastic one, this is where you're allowed to be like me).

And cut/chop/mangle that cake like there is no tomorrow.

You want lots of crumbs, and not a lot of big pieces.

Now, take a can (I just realized I call them "cans of frosting". It's a plastic container.)... take a plastic can of frosting and soften it in the microwave for a couple of seconds. This is the first warning I'll give about the microwave - don't let anything distract you from watching the frosting in the microwave. If you accidentally let it go for the ENTIRE MINUTE you set it for, it will become pure liquid, and will begin to separate. It's disgusting. But you'll use it any way because it's the only one you have, and you can't go to the store.

Mix the cake crumbs and frosting until everything is wonderfully coated. You don't want to find any dry spots of the cake. And no giant clumps of frosting.

I do everything in one pan, saves dishes! Shove all the mixture to one side, find a five & thirteen-year-old to help you, and roll the cake-frosting mixture into one-inch balls. (Shame on you if you thought that was my hand.)

It'll eventually take up the whole pan - perfectly!

Use a plate to melt a few of the candy coating wafers. This is just plain, white, vanilla. Roll one end of a lollipop stick in the melted candy.

Now insert the lollipop stick into the cake ball. You don't want to go all the way through, but far enough to really anchor it in there.
Continue with all of them...

Now put them in the fridge for at least an hour. You want the cake balls and the "glue" to be cold and set.
While they're setting up, you can move onto this...

And THIS is where it just gets stupid. I knew I wanted to make super cute, bright cake pops, but I didn't want to have to buy 5 different bags of candy wafers. Instead, I bought one giant bag of white, vanilla ones, and bought that little box of dye's you see. "Custom Colors!" it proclaims. Why would I choose the box that had green, red, orange, and black? Why wouldn't I choose the one that had way better colors? I have NO idea. I don't know what they expect you to make with these colors. Brown? Dark Green? Dark Red?

It took about half of that little dye container to make my candy coating that bright.

I ended up making green, orange, red, gray (from the black), blue (from a little gel dye tube I found in the pantry), white (that one was easy), and a purple that I had from the previous batch of cake pops I made (pictures at end).

So you dunk...

Tap off extra... Carefully!

Shake your sprinkles of choice on...

And voila!

Crappy picture, but aren't they cute? The gray color was actually a really cute choice with the contrast of the bright sprinkles I used. You can just dip the top or cover the whole thing. Which ever you choose, just know that a knife is helpful for getting extra coating off.

This is where my second microwaving warning happens - do not microwave the candy coating wafers too much! I don't know why it only happened to the orange, but it hardened right up. After that I was very careful about how much I was putting the other colors into the microwave.

And here is the whole mess of them. Feel free to lay them however you want once the candy coating hardens up. Those purple ones are from Halloween themed ones I made earlier with the kids I was babysitting. They're Devil's Food cake mix with the purple vanilla coating.