So I finally decided to make cake pops! The first time I had a cake pop was about 4 years ago when my cousins wife made some. I had never had them before and this my cake pop addiction had begun! For the last year it so I've been getting cake pops from Starbucks, my other addiction, but I had always thought $3 per cake pop was a bit expensive. Or maybe I'm just cheap lol! So I went and pulled up the recipe online and decided to make some myself! Read my step by step instructions on how to fail at making cake pops below! :(
So to start off, I gathered my ingredients. You'll need cake mix, standard cake ingredients found on your cake box, cake frosting, and a dipping chocolate. I used Almond Bark in the vanilla flavor. You can use any type of melting chocolate you like though. I used this because it was cheaper than getting a bag of chocolate chips to melt (it was $1.99 at Target) and it's specially made for candy coating. I was supposed to get lollipop sticks, and a Styrofoam block but I was too lazy. Don't be like me, buy both of those items. I'll tell you why later.
Any type of cake will do. I used vanilla because that's all that was in my cabinets. I also used vanilla icing.
Follow directions on cake box as to how to make the actual cake.
Once the cake is baked, section it off into four even sections. If necessary, cut off the cooked brown edges of the cake. You don't want crispy pieces in your pops!
I took my cake out a little earlier than usual and it was amazing! It was so soft and would practically melt in your mouth. I'm a firm believer that the best part of a cake is the icing but this cake changed my mind completely. It was delicious!
Crumple the large cake pieces one at a time with your hands. Now here's the part that I messed up on. You are supposed to add some icing to the cake crumbs and roll them into a ball. If you add too much icing, the cake will be too moist and won't stick together.
This is what mine looked like. :( they're lumpy and of course, won't stick together very well. These seven were from my first chunk of cake. There would have been more but I was eating it before I could actually roll them into pops! :)
I was originally planning to change the freeze overnight step but because my pops were so soft and gooey, I decided to do it anyway so they could harden up a bit. This is what they looked like the next morning.
They had hardened a bit but it still wasn't good enough. You'll see why in a minute. Next, I tried melting the chocolate coating in the microwave but that didn't turn out so well. It took a few tries to get the Almond Bark (that's the brand name) to melt. As you can see from the first photo, it comes in large thick blocks. It didn't all melt at the same time so I ended up burning some of the chocolate. :-/ I wish I had taken a photo but I forgot.
The final step is to roll the balls into the candy coating. There are two reasons why this didn't work for me. As stated before, my pops weren't very firm so they started breaking off in the coating.
Second to that, it's much more difficult to coat them and have them dry without lollipop sticks.
If you have the sticks, poke holes in the Styrofoam block for each cake pop. Take the stick and gently press it into your cake balls and lightly swirl them inside the candy coating. Make sure you coat the cake entirely. I noticed that the Almond Bark I used would harden quickly when it came into contact with the cake so be aware of that in case you would like to add toppings such as sprinkles.
Place them into the holes in the Styrofoam and you're done!
Even though my cake pops broke apart in the frosting, it certainly didn't stop me from eating them! However, The Almond Bark was SUPER SWEET! So sweet it was actually too much for me to eat. I stopped dipping the last few and just ate them plain.
In the end, cutting corners was not a good idea. I ended up messing up my recipe and it wasn't worth it. :-/
*sighs* Disappointment
