First Successful Cake Pops- Chicks!

Okay, so a few days after my first failure at making cake pops, I summoned the muster to make another batch.  With Bakerella’s Cake Pops book on my counter for guidance, I knew I could make it work.  So here is what I learned from her book and internet research:

I'm not a fan of the Chocolate Pot.

• Melting chocolate is like love- it can’t be rushed.  You rush it, and you can’t work with it at all.  It gets all lumpy, gooey, and, well, just downright grumpy.  Making chocolate or candy coating hotter will not make it thinner or easier to work with!  So melt your chocolate slooooowly.  I tried using a Chocolate Pot, but it consistently overheated my chocolate after about 20 minutes of being on just the ‘warm’ setting.  For this batch, I used the chocolate pot.  More on what I currently use to melt my chocolate in a later post.
  



Keep your melted chocolate under 100 degrees!

• Use a candy thermometer!   Melted chocolate is happiest under 100 degrees.  If you can keep your chocolate melted and under 100 degrees, you will have nice, even coating on your pops.  Before I used a candy thermometer, what I used to think was the correct temperature was actually 120 degrees- waaaaay too hot.  No wonder my candy coating was grumpy and lumpy!
  
• Thin your candy coating as it melts.  An inexpensive way to go is to use a tablespoon or so of Crisco shortening for each 14 oz bag of Wilton’s candy melts.  This will keep your melted chocolate working thin and smooth without adding heat.  I use another product to thin my candy coating now, but I’ll address that later.  Crisco tends to work just fine for most cake pops.
  






• Don’t use an entire tub of frosting for your pops!  It turns them into cake mush, and they won't stay on your stick when you dip them!  Ugh.  Use just enough frosting to make your cake balls stick together.  For this batch, I used about 1/3 of a tub of frosting.  It’s easy to add too much frosting, so be conservative.  A drier cake ball holds its shape really well, which is good for if you're making cupcake cake pops, or any other shape other than a ball.  You can always add more frosting, you can’t take it away.  Some people suggest adding more cake to salvage a batch that has a lot of frosting, but I say, just check your cake crumbs and frosting mix as you go.  Indoor humidity has a lot to do with how much frosting you will need to add, too.  In summary, there is no exact ratio for crumbs to frosting.  Remember: “Just enough to hold a ball together!”  






• Inserting the stick into the cake ball:  if you haven’t used too much frosting in your crumb mixture, you should have fairly firm balls (no jokes, here, please!!!) after refrigerating them.  You should NOT need to re-refrigerate your cake balls after initially dipping the candy-coated stick into the ball.  Your cake balls should be firm enough that you can immediately dip.  This makes for a very clean coated finish to the area where the stick meets the cake ball.  And it saves you a step of work as well as time.  Me, I dip the stick, put the stick in the cake ball, and dip away.  The whole pop is stuck, coated, and ready to dry within a minute.

Okay, enough of my first tips.  On to making Chick Pops!

So I started with a vanilla cake mix, but I added lemon extract to it to zip it up.  In my opinion, a yellow cake pop should have either a lemon or banana flavor.  That's just me.  Bake your cake, and then crumble it by hand into a fine mix, making sure no hard lumps are in it.  Yes, I said by hand.  I tried mixing it in a stand mixer, and it made my dry cake kind of mushy.  Maybe I overmixed it.  At any rate, it doesn't take very long to crumble your cake into a bowl with your fingers.  And there is something really fun about turning a cake into a bowl of crumbs!

 I mixed only about 1/3 of a tub of frosting into the mix.  Like I mentioned before, you should only add enough frosting to hold the ball together, so most cake batches will not need an entire tub of frosting!  A whole tub of frosting will cause your cake balls to be mushy and fall off the stick when you dip.  So be conservative when adding your frosting.  This is how my cake balls looked before adding them to the refrigerator for a few hours.  Each one was between 1.25 and 1.5 inches in diameter.




  
I was using Bakerella's Cake Pops book for my inspiration.  This is was I was hoping to create.  Little chicks!










Here are the little orange star feet, orange coated chocolate chips for beaks, and yellow coated chocolate chips for wings.  The eyes will be drawn on with edible ink.  I used Aetco Food Color markers.














Here they are after my first series of dips!  Yellow, nice coating, and ready to decorate.  For the first few pops, I had no problems with the chocolate's consistency.  But as I continued dipping, I found that the chocolate began to clump up and get thick on me.  So I added a few tablespoons of Crisco.  That thinned up my coating for a few pop dips, then it began to thicken up again.  So I added more Crisco.  You can see where this cycle goes.  My mistake?  I kept adding more heat, thinking that it would thin my chocolate, and when that stopped working, I added a thinning agent (Crisco).  Don't do this!  Keep your chocolate under 100 degrees, and you won't have this problem.  As a result of so much shortening, my candy coating lost its gloss.  In addition, it rendered my food color markers completely ineffective; they don't work on oily surfaces!  I ended up having to use tiny black nonpareils for eyes, which was much too much work.

And here is my very first completed chick cake pop!  What a cutie!  I was so excited that I actually made one that turned out great.  That enthusiasm gave me motivation to complete the batch.  It was fun!

And here is the whole flock of chick cake pops!  I think they turned out great considering they were my first complete batch.  And I wrapped them all up and sent them to my daughter's preschool for the kids.  They were a huge hit!  The feedback I received from them motivated me to make more.  And now I can't stop!

Ready to chomp!

One bite...

Two bites....

Gone.