Graduation Cap Cake Pops

For my niece's graduation from high school, I decided to make a batch of graduation cap cake pops.

I began making the cake balls in a shape just a bit smaller than would fit into a small peanut butter cup mold.  These molds are very inexpensive, and if you're making a big batch of this type of cake pop, I highly recommend getting several of them to save time.  I just had one, and it made the whole process really long!

It's important to make sure that they fit well within the mold, or else you will end up with messy edges on the cap.  These cake balls are a whole lot smaller than normal cake pops are.  As a result, one box of cake mix yielded me over seventy (yes, SEVENTY) cake balls for my grad cap cake pops.  Since I was mailing these, I didn't think I would need that many.  I ended up freezing a bunch of them for a later project.

I completely forgot to take photos of the initial mold process!  Basically, you put some melted candy coating into your chocolate mold, about 1/3 the way full (you may need to experiment).  Put the cake ball into the mold, and push gently.  The coating will work its way up the sides of the mold.  Don't put your stick in yet!  When you've filled your mold tray, place everything in the freezer for a few minutes so the candy coating can set.

After chilling your molded cake balls, cover the top of the cake balls with extra candy coating.   Remember, your cake should fit well within- almost under- the rim of the mold, or else the coating will spill over the sides.  Before the candy coating sets, place your stick into the cake ball in the mold.  You can see in the photo above how the candy coating spilled along the rim, and caused a messy finish at the edges.  Don't worry about the tops not looking finished at this point.  They will be covered with a candy coating square.

Another thing I forgot to photograph:  how to form the square tops of these!  I have a silicone brownie bite tray, which has about 24 small squares in it.  I put some melted candy coating into a plastic squeeze bottle, and filled each square with a small amount.  I then put them in the freezer to firm up.  They popped out very easily, and looked very professional, in my opinion!

Then I took one of the squares, and using some extra melted candy coating, I glued the square to the top of the cake pop.  I used a piece of yellow licorice as a tassel, and a yellow M&M as the tassel holder.

Here are the whole batch.  These are the school colors for my niece's high school.  You could use any color combination, though!

All wrapped up and ready to be shipped across the country.  I was told that they were a huge hit at my niece's graduation party!

One note if you're planning on making these:  Although they don't look it, these are REALLY time-consuming compared to other cake pops!  Make sure you have a few extra hours set aside when making these.