Cake Pop Disasters

Cake pops. Cake balls. If you haven't heard about cake pops or cake balls in the past couple of years, you must be living under a rock.  It's one of the biggest trends in the foodie world that began by Bakerella. It's basically cake mixed with frosting, shaped into balls and coated with candy melts or chocolate.
The popularity of her cake pops skyrocketed...cake pops are on the cover page of cooking magazines, Starbucks started selling them, and I even saw Chef Duff cakepops at Sam's Club! 

I thought to myself, "Self, I want to attempt to make these cute dainty little cake pops and balls." Boy was I wrong. Here's one of my initial attempts making cake balls. See all the cracked pieces with the cake showing. This is a prime example of what NOT to do.

No one posts about their epic fails making cake balls/pops. All you see are those beautiful smooth finished products.

They resemble balls, but have an inconsistent surface.  I figured out that if you squish a bunch together in paper  liners, they look slightly more presentable. 

I then upgraded and bought this Wilton Chocolate Pro melter to keep my candy coating warm while dipping the cake pops.  I'm just putting this out to all of you (two people) reading this blog.  The candy melts are too thick in this picture. If you stick a cake pop in candy melts with the consistency seen above, your cake pop will probably stick straight up in that mass.  You want the candy melts to be thin and have a low viscosity. If found this out the hard way. TIP-If it's too viscous, add some sort of fat (Crisco, butter, vegetable oil) to thin it out.

 TIP-I also dipped each lollipop stick in the candy melt first and then stuck it in the refrigerated cake balls. After this step, I place the pan in the freezer for 15 minutes to harden the pops to make them more manageable.

Again, I tried to dip the cake pops and made ugly pops.  I was running late, so I left them out to harden.  When I got home, I noticed that I bunch of the cake pops were top heavy and fell through the stick. Note to self-make smaller balls of cake.

TIP-You need something to cool the cake pops on. I imagine styrofoam would work wonders as a base board for the pops. I bought this cake stand to hold my cake pops. Instead of using it as a decorative piece, I just reuse it every time I attempt to make cakepops.

Again, another TIP cute packaging like plastic bags and pink bows can mask the rough surface.

For my third attempt I added some vegetable oil to the candy melts and made smaller cake balls.  Mike laughed when I told him my plan of action. He remembered my shock when I returned home to see the top heavy pops. 

Whoo-hoo success! Look at that smooth surface! Watch out world! I may soon start making character pops or venture off adding decorations to these pops. 

Finished Product.  This is my most successful attempt to date!