Chickens, Sheep, Bunny, and Bear Cake Pops

So after I created my first successful batch of cake pops (chicks!), I thought I would try some other characters.  I decided to use white candy coating and chocolate cake to make sheep and chickens.  I also found some time to make a bear, too!

In the Cake Pops book by Bakerella, the sheep are so adorable!  Making the balls was not difficult.  But decorating them was so incredibly time-consuming!  First, let me say that finding the Bridge mix isn't hard.  But I feel like I waste so much of it because all I use from the mix is the black drops (for the heads), and the black pastilles (for the legs).  Why I can't find these on their own, I don't know.  If anyone knows of a place to buy just these items, please let me know.

Most of this bridge mix I don't have a use for.

The parts I use for the sheep pops.

 And the tiny hearts she recommends using are difficult to find as well.  All I could find were the small candy hearts, not the teeny-tiny ones.  So I used the ones I could find, but they seemed awful big.

Small candy hearts.  They come in a smaller size, but I haven't found them yet.

Here is a dipped cake pop with the candy head and legs attached.  Bakerella recommends to glue the head and legs on while the coating is still wet, as well as put on the sugar ball "wool".  That wouldn't work for me because my candy coating dried too fast!  And do you think I would spend time gluing each and every ball on the pop?  No way!



So while I didn't have the white sugar balls Bakerella recommends using in the book, so I cut up pieces of mini-marshmallows and tried to use those instead.  I thought it would save me time, too

As you can see, the mini-marshmallows seem to dwarf the pop.  And there was way too much marshmallow on the pop, taste-wise.  I think small fondant balls may be the way to go next. 

Annoyed at how long this one pop took me (almost 30 minutes!), I downshifted into making something easier:  chicken pops.

 Chicken pops are really easy, especially compared the the sheep pops!  I used 3-4 candy hearts for the crest, and two candy hearts for the beaks.  The eyes were dabbed on with an edible ink marker.

 I like creating expressions on my cake pops when I can.  It doesn't take a lot of effort to turn a plain old face into a smiling cutie!

This one reminds me of Groucho Marx.  Must be the eyebrows and surprised expression!

 If the coating has dried by the time you get around to adding the beaks and crest, you can use some extra melted candy as 'glue', but the end result won't be as nice as if you can get them on immediately.

 Since I had some extra time, I thought I would make a bunny head.  It was quite easy to do, but I had to reshape the cake ball before dipping in order to give it that pouchy-cheek look.  The face was drawn on with edible ink pens, the nose is a candy heart, and the ears are pastel candy corn.

I was experimenting, and I had a little more time, so I thought I would try to make a bear.  I gently shaped a ball into the bear-head shape.  Then I used white tic-tacs as the ears.  They were placed in the cake ball before dipping.  The end result was a nice, solid coated head.   The rest was drawn on with a black edible ink pen.  Looks like a polar bear to me.  Simple and cute!