Halloween Cake Pops

If you never heard of Cake Pops chances are you don’t read blogs.  They have been featured two years ago on Martha Stewart and the popularity of this treat can be blamed on one person Bakerella.  Her creations are amazing and her brand new book Cake Pops just published.  In order to look inside click on the image below to see some featured creations or visit her blog here.

To make it more fun they are relatively easy to make, especially if you tell yourself before hand that you are not Bakerella and still need time to practice, and you will want to, or may need to.  The cake balls are moist and rich while the chocolate coating is crunchy.  They are amazing and the only problem with them is that you can never make enough.  You make them for toddlers friends all of a sudden the tween wants to serve some and your husband wants to bring them to work.  After two days in cake pops you are a pro.  Well maybe not exactly but almost.

For the cake pops you need a box of your favorite ready mix.  Since these were for Halloween it had to be red velvet but if you can’t live without chocolate then go right ahead.

And a 12 oz box of your favorite frosting.  Those come in so many variations that you can spend a day in a grocery store isle just thinking of the possibilities.

Bake the cake according to the directions on the box, cool for a few minutes

using a fork break apart.

Since I like to make my life more complicated then it needs to be, meaning I forgot to buy frosting and instead brought cream cheese.  I had to make my own cream cheese frosting.  Thank goodness it only takes a sec.

16 oz cream cheese, 1 stick butter, 1 tsp vanilla, 2 1/2 cups powder sugar.  This will give you more then 12 oz ( 1 1/2 cups) frosting needed so dip it in some strawberries or just eat it outright.

Make sure the cream cheese and butter are at room temp or soft.  Throw it all in the mixer and once it is smooth you are done.

throw it on the cake

mix well with hands

I use 1 tbs to make sure that all the pops are the same size, just in case.

place on a sheet and place in a fridge for at least an hour.  You can speed up the process by placing it in the freezer.  You are waiting for them to become harder.

You have to be careful because little goblins  love to steal them when you are not watching.

Melt the chocolate over water bath, or buy chocolate bark in your grocery store that is already packaged in a tray and ready for microwave since it is fool proof, the stove top melting is a little tricky.

Boil the water, place the bowl with bark (wafer chips) over it, turn to low, when the chocolate begins to melt turn off but keep on the burner. Place the pop stick into the cake and cover with melted chocolate making sure the whole pop is covered all the way to the stick or else it will crack.

We made our cake pops in different colors.  White became mummies and ghosts, orange pumpkins and green where Frankensteins.

We used the writing eatable pen to draw on them.  You can buy them in specialty stores, michaels, hubby lobby and even walmart.

To keep the cake pops upright it is best to use foam block.  Yes we tried cardboard boxes but they just do not work that well.  Before you start searching your house for old boxes from tvs and computers realize that most computers are now shipped in plastic not styrofoam.

Here is a look from a cake pop point of view.

Pumpkins- orange bark and green tic tac.

Mommies-white bark and green food frosting for eyes.

Frankensteins- green bark, black frosting (or you can dip in chocolate, or draw), white frosting for eyes.

They are a lot of fun to make with kids and even teenagers will enjoy making strange characters like Elvis, Devil, Purple People Eater.  Just remember when you do decide to make them for a function, hide them, or else people will fight for them.  At this moment in my fridge there are 29 cake pops, 15 for my husband and 14 for my daughter.  How do I know this?  Because they have been counted and distributed faster then pirates treasure.  If one is missing there is going to be war.