Pawsome pumpkin cake pops

by Caitlin Noblitt, Digital Intern Bear

What better way to celebrate this ghoulish month than by making delicious cake pops that look like adorable pumpkins? We decided to make pumpkins but you could make any Halloween character – think ghosts, spiders, monsters, and mummies! Cake pops are the latest craze in baking so try this treat with your kids and gobble up some good food!

Ingredients:

-          1 box of cake mix of your choosing

-          1 container of icing or 1 pkg of cream cheese (Note: anything made with cream cheese should be refrigerated.)

-          Orange candy melts (found at craft store in baking section)

-          Black cookie icing (found at craft store in baking section)

-          Toothpicks

-          Green Tic Tacs or green icing for the stems

-          Lollipop sticks

-          Cake pop stand or a block of Styrofoam to stick the cake pops in to dry

1. To save ourselves some time, we decided to bake our cake the night before. We started out the next day by cutting four sections to break down the cake.

2. Let’s get ready to crumble! Crumble the cake and mix in the icing or cream cheese. You can choose to use icing but we prefer cream cheese because it doesn’t make the cake pops too sweet.

3. Take this mix and begin to mold the cake into your desired shape. Since we made pumpkins, we just rolled the cake into balls and placed them in the refrigerator for 15 minutes while we worked on the candy melts. This helps them hold their shape better when coating with icing.

4. Melt the candy melts on the stove or in the microwave. Place the candy melts in a deep bowl so it’s easy to dip and coat the cake pops!

5. Remove the cake balls from the refrigerator. Take the lollipop stick and dip the tip in the melted candy melts before inserting in the cake pop balls. This will help the cake to better stay on the stick.

6. Twist the cake pop for about 5 seconds to completely cover.

7. Tap the excess candy melts by holding the cake pop on its side and continuously rotating.

8. We used a cake pop stand to hold ours while they dried.

9. Making the faces is the fun part, but it can also be tricky! We used black cookie icing to create the pumpkins’ faces. After microwaving the icing, use a toothpick to carefully draw on the face. We sketched the face before filling it in with icing all the way. Let the icing set for about 15-30 minutes.

10. For the stems, you can either use green icing or green Tic Tacs. We found spearmint Tic Tacs to be the best option.

Have you tried your hand at making cake pops before? Share your pictures with us if you dare to make this fun treat!