Spooky Cake Pops

Earlier this month I saw a picture of The Flourishing Foodie’s adorable Reddit cake pops on Tastespotting. How cute! I thought these would be a perfect treat for Gabe’s bake sale at his school‘s Halloween party.

Does anyone not know what a cake pop is? For those rare folks who may have just arrived back home from an extended vacation away from food blogs and Starbucks, let me enlighten you….  A cake pop is a ball of sweet deliciousness on a stick: crumbled cake, mixed with frosting and then coated in chocolate, white chocolate, candy coating or fondant. And that’s not all; the decoration options are endless with what you can affix to the coating: sprinkles, candy, frosting, more fondant, etc.

I also had a potluck at work the week before the party so I thought I’d make my coworkers the guinea pigs, ahem, I mean taste testers for the cake pops before the bake sale. This is a time consuming recipe, but the results are really worth it.

My weekdays are pretty busy with work and kids, so this took a bit of planning. It took me 3 evenings to make the cake pops. Evening 1 I baked the cake and crumbled it and mixed the frosting in it and put it in the fridge. On evening 2 I shaped the mixture into balls and put them back in the fridge. And finally the glamorous and fun part…on evening 3 I dipped them in chocolate and decorated them with sprinkles. Of course you can do it all in one go, but then it probably would’ve been an really late night for me.

For decorations, I used an assortment of sprinkles. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I have a ton of Halloween sprinkles: Bats, spiders, bones, eyeballs and pumpkins.

Before I started, I did some research on the web. Much of what I learned is from these sites:

cakepoprecipes.org shared an idea about dipping the stick in melted candy coating first before inserting it into the cake pop. It helps the cake pop stay on the stick. More on this later.

Bake at 350 made some lovely pumpkin cake balls; how festive!

And of course,  Bakerella has some amazing decoration ideas.

Some things I learned while making cake pops:

There will be some cake pops that want to fall off the sticks when you dip them; it’s ok. Have a plate with parchment on it close by and you can let them fall onto the parchment and you can serve them as cake balls instead. No one will know.

Keeping the cake mixture cold helps the cake pops stay on the sticks. But not too cold. The candy coating on some of the cake pops I made cracked – these were the first ones that came out of the fridge. If you notice the first ones cracking, wait a few minutes until they warm up a tiny bit and then start dipping them again.

If you use a cake mix, do not use one that has chocolate chips in it or if you do, use less frosting. I unwittingly used one with chocolate chips and the full container of frosting and the mixture was a little wet and a larger number of the cake pops fell off the sticks when I was coating them.

When you shape the cake pops, dip the stick into some of the candy melts you are using first before inserting the stick in the cake pop, so it looks like this:

This will help the cake mixture stay attached to the stick. If you find that many of the cake pops are falling off the sticks, your mixture is probably too moist, but not to worry. Before you coat the cake pops, use your fingers to mold some of the cake mixture from the pop around the little blob of candy coating around the stick and then coat.

The chocolate and white candy melts have differing consistencies. When melted, the white candy melts are very runny and coat the pops very easily. The chocolate melts are a lot stiffer. It still works fine but I had to spoon it over the pops to cover them completely.

If you make these, your friends and family will be so impressed. Trust me, I know!

Spooky Cake Pops
makes about 50-60 pops

1 box cake mix (see notes above)
1 container frosting (I used Cream Cheese flavor)
About 3 bags candy melts (I made half with dark chocolate and half with white chocolate)
Assorted sprinkles

Equipment needed:

9×13 baking pan
Lollipop sticks (I found these at the local craft store)
Parchment paper
Rimmed baking pan
A block of styrofoam to put the cake pops in (I found mine in the floral section of  the craft store. I covered it with plastic wrap as the foam block shed small bits of foam.)
Plastic wrap

1. Bake the cake in a 9×13 pan. Cool and crumble into a large bowl. Add frosting and mix. Refrigerate until cold.

2. Prepare your workspace to shape the cake balls. Line a rimmed baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper. Take out the lollipop sticks and put them in a container that will make them easy to grab.

3. Melt about a cup of the chocolate/candy melts in a bowl. Take the cake mixture out of the fridge and form into slightly less than walnut-sized balls. Dip the tip of a lollipop stick (about 1/2″) in the melted chocolate/candy melts and insert the stick about 3/4 of the way into the cake ball. Place the cake ball on the parchment-lined baking sheet and repeat until all cake balls are formed. This part can get quite messy so I kept a damp paper towel nearby for my fingers so I didn’t get cake all over the pop sticks. Put the cake balls in the fridge again until they are cold.

4. Take the cake balls out of the fridge and place them in your workspace. To minimize the possibility of cracking you can let them warm up a bit. If you are using sprinkles, put them in bowls within reach. In a microwave safe bowl, melt the chocolate/candy melts, starting with one minute and stirring and then in 30 second intervals with stirring in-between to allow for even melting. All of the websites I visited during my cake pop research warned not to overheat the coating as this would cause it to seize up and they suggested if this happens to add a small amount of shortening to the mixture. Water will also seize it up so keep your equipment that touches the candy melts dry.

5. Take your first cake ball and reshape it with your fingers – they may have gotten a little flattened from being on the baking sheet. (Again I had a damp paper towel nearby for my messy fingers.) Then dip in the candy melts. If it helps, use a spoon to spoon the melted coating over the bottom of the cake pop and then dip. Gently swirl the pop in the melted mixture and lift the pop up as you swirl. Keep swirling gently until the pop is out of the coating. If the coating is thick, you may need to swirl quickly so it doesn’t build up too thickly on the pop.

6. Use your fingers to sprinkle your sprinkles on the still wet candy melt coating. Bigger sprinkles (bats, eyeballs, bones) may need to be strategically placed on the pop. Smaller sprinkles (non-pareils, jimmies) can be sprinkled on.

7. Insert your cake pop, stick down, into the styrofoam block to dry. Repeat these steps for each cake pop.

Cake pops can be kept in the freezer but my fellow cake pop bloggers write that they cannot be refrigerated due to condensation buildup on the pops.