When Cake Pops began showing up on the
Wilton website, I tried not to look. I really didn't take much notice and then Wilton had a Cake Pop Blog contest, so I decided to check it out. All of the entrants blogs were great and inspiring. From there I went to back
Bakerella's website to take another look at her
Hello Kitty Cake Pop Tutorial and with a little help from hers and other various websites, I pulled off creating my first cake pops which are pictured below.
It took making 2 or 3 pops to get the technique down, but once I did they were really easy to make! Not only did these taste great, my youngest daughter loved the Hello Kitty design and they were a hit! Anyways, Bakerella has already created a tutorial on Hello Kitty Cake Pops so I am going to show you a quick tutorial on how to make a basic cake pop that I made on 1/23/2011 before making my own blog was even an idea!
Ingredients
1 Bag Wilton Candy Melts (any color)
Crisco Stick (1 TB)
6" Wilton Lollipop Sticks
Sanding Sugar (optional-any color)
Any flavor baked cake (I used a boxed mix for this)
Any canned frosting (1 heaping TB plus more if needed)
First start by baking your cake and letting it cool. After the cake was cooled and I was ready to begin I put the bag of candy melts into my "Wilton Chocolate Pro", I have tried melting this in the microwave before and it is just really hard to keep it at the right consistency which made making candy too much of a pain, the Wilton Chocolate Pro solves that!.
Next I broke the cake into chunks in a very large bowl. I just used a large metal spoon to chop it up as in the picture below. You will also see a heaping tablespoon of canned vanilla frosting. That was all I needed for this amount but for an entire cake you may need a little more. Just enough to get this stuff to stick together, too much and they will fall apart. Remember you can add more, you cant take back it out!
(I used the entire cake when I made my Hello Kitty Pops which was a strawberry cake, but for these cake pops I was using a white funfetti cake and didn't want to put the tan top, bottom, and edge parts of the cake in so I cut them off ahead of time, this drops the amount of cake pops you can make about in half, but the kids loved eating the extra cake parts.)
By the time I finished mixing, the Wilton Chocolate Pro had melted the candy melts and I added 1 Tablespoon of a Crisco Shortening stick to thin out the melts a little. (I didn't do this when I made the Hello Kitty Pops and it was a little harder to get them even)
From this, I began by making little balls with the cake mixture until I used it all placing them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. After that, I dipped the stick in the candy melts about 1/3 inches and stuck them in the little cake balls and placed them back on the waxed lined cookie sheet.
My cookie sheet would not fit into the freezer, so I put it it in the refrigerator for about a half hour and then removed 2 or 3 at a time and put them on a wax paper lined plate in the freezer for about 3-5 minutes, take one out at a time, leaving the rest in to stay cold. (These can't be left in the freezer too long or it will cause them to later crack once they are coated in the candy melts. I did end up with 2 or 3 of 25 cracking, so not too bad.) I found this refrigerator to freezer method works best for me. With the Hello Kitty Cake Pops after they were cold I put them on the counter and by the time I was about 1/3rd of the way done with the dipping, they were getting too soft and I had to re-refrigerate them, so it is just easier to leave them in there and grab them as needed.
I don't have a picture of these cake pops being dipped, but I carefully dipped the cake pops into the candy melts and then gently tapped off the excess candy melts and turned the cake pop while doing this for an evenly coated ball.
The cake pops that I wanted sprinkled I held over a bow and sprinkled immediately after dipping. I tried dipping the cake pop into the sprinkles, but that caused flat parts so I found the best method was to sprinkle them over a bowl and continue to reuse the sprinkles.
The cake pops that I wanted to leave plain I just put into the holder to dry immediately. At this point I didn't (still dont) have a really good holder, so my hubby made a quick one for me out of a box with holes poked in it. I had to put a towel under this so they didn't slide around. After they were all dried I put them in a cup to photograph.
I hope you find this tutorial helpful. There are many tutorials out there, find which one works best for you or try a combo of methods!
I remember thinking at that time that I would probably never make the full body Hello Kitty Cookie, it just looked too overwhelming and would take too much time. Well, here it is! I finally made it!
