Halloween Cake Pops!

11:30 PM Unknown 0 Comments

I was driving home from work the other day and I passed a business advertising their cake bites. Of course I stopped to get one and decided this was going to be the week I would make them. Alas, I put it off for another week, and then I thought how cute would it be to make themed Halloween ones!! Guys. I did not realize how much work I had just made for myself. But, it was so much fun and well worth it.

I researched different recipes and wanted to find one that I already had all the things for. I did have to go buy candy coating...but everything else I had!

I started by following the directions on a box of chocolate cake mix. I baked it according to the directions and then stuck it in the fridge to help speed up the cooling.

While the cake was cooling, I made frosting. Most of the recipes I found used the store bought kind..but I didn't want to go buy any, so I just made it! Super easy:

½ cup butter (softened)

¼ cup milk

¼ cup cocoa

just a splash of vanilla

and then powder sugar to the consistency of frosting (usually 3 1/2 cups)

I removed my cake from the fridge when it was cooled all the way through, and took it out of the pan:

(You'll be cutting it into pieces so you don't have to worry how it comes out of the pan)

I wasn't quite sure on the proportions so I started out by crumpling a fourth of the cake in a bowl and adding a scoop of frosting. Eventually I got a consistency that I was able to roll the mixture into balls. I made a couple of different sizes and I was happiest working (when it came to decorating) with a smaller size.

To prevent the cake pops from falling/sliding down the stick, I put them in the freezer for about 4 hours until they were solid all the way through.

While they were in the freezer, my friend and I started preparing things for decorating. I didn't have the actual "sticks" on hand, so I used wood sticks you usually use for kabobs. We decided to paint the sticks different Halloween colors (using acrylic paint). We ran into a problem for drying them but simply poked holes in a cardboard box to hold them. We came up with ideas to make a ghost, pumpkin, and witch. The witch would take the most work, but it sounded like it was going to be so cute!

Four hours later, we were ready to go. I ended up having 2 more friends show up and their help was very welcomed. It's possible to do this alone, but how much fun would this be to do as a group date night?!

We decided to start with making the pumpkins and witches. We melted the candy coating according to the directions on the package. Since we were planning on doing multiple colors, we started with one block from the six-pack. We put the food coloring in after it was melted; thus making it a little crumbly, so we added milk. Adding in the milk makes it a little more "liquid-y" but this makes it easier to work with.

I then took a cake ball and rolled it in my hands placing the candy coating around the cake ball. The milk came right off, making the candy coating stick perfectly to the cake ball. We did the same with the witch faces and then let them set

We put put the body on before we put the cake pop on the stick. Refer below for instructions.

[Notice we did poke the hole and some all the way through the witches face for the purpose of adding a hat! You can also put them back in the freezer to help them firm up.]

While those were setting, we started working on the ghost. We were just going to dip them in the candy coating on their own, but then we wondered how cool would it be if after dipping them in the candy coating, we put powder sugar on it. It was awesome!! We put powder sugar in a bowl and then before the candy coating had dried, we stuck it in powder sugar and just spun the bowl around forcing the cake ball to roll in the powder sugar. For the eyes you can either melt chocolate or use food paint or the food coloring pens/tubes.

Back to the pumpkins:

the stem we had some melted caramel and molded a simple tube to place on top.
the leaf was some leftover candy coating from the witched face
for the pumpkin face, my friend melted chocolate and literally carved out the pieces. That was a little labor intensive..but looks awesome. Otherwise refer to items used for the ghost faces.

For the witch:

so for the body a simple black-dress outline was drawn freehand out of black card stock
the witches boots I had a super cute stamp or you can draw the boots as well. (originally we weren't even going to put boots on her, either way works)
we wanted our witch to have some hair. The original thought was to pull apart licorice, but we already had some melted caramel. We basically waited for the melted caramel to cool down slightly (yep, definitely burned myself) and rolled little pieces and stuck them on what we decided would be the back of the witch.
Her hat is a chocolate kiss! I stuck it in the microwave for about 10 seconds-not enough to melt it, but to make it soft so I could easily place it on the part of the stick sticking out.
Eyes-i just used crumbs that were leftover from the cake ball
mouth- died a little bit of the candy coating red