My first cake pops!

Edited to add in my tips! Decided to make this post a double whammy with educational reading and photos!

After seeing the cake pops all over the internet and in Starbucks, I finally made some myself. Though they are cute to look at, they take a lot of work, and are VERY VERY rich.

I learned about the cake pops (see my last post) of Bakerella and researched many techniques online. Thought I felt like I had it down and could do it no prob, there were actually a few unforseeable bumps in the road. I made a few mistakes, but at least I know what to do better the next time, when I make rainbow cake pops, or Nutella butterscotch cake pops!

1. Do NOT dip frozen cake pops into chocolate candy melts (or probably any chocolate for that matter). Mine were quite frozen by the time I got to the chocolate ones, and they expanded after freezing and cracked the chocolate.

2. Definitely add oil to the chocolate, when melted, to make it less thick, thus go on the ball smoother.

3. I had no idea how to drizzle the melted chocolate on to make the decorative lines, I kept holding the spoon the wrong way. Since then I figured out how it really is supposed to be done, through pictures in how-tos.

4. Moist cake mixes don't need as much icing as the rest. I could have used possibly 1/3 of the can.

5. I did not realize how big of a styrofoam block I would need. I bought 2 small ones from the garden section of Hobby Lobby and they old held about 10 pops each. Which leads to my next mistake.

6. Each cake mix makes about 50 pops. Which is waaay too many pops to make for just my boyfriend and I, so I will be giving some to friends, family, friends of family, etc. Haha. My cake mix only ended up making about 30 pops, I think it may be because of using less icing, I don't know. I ended up just making chocolate covered balls, like cake pops without the sticks.

7. I also did not realize how long it would take to make these. I am used to making baked goods, out of the box, that take maybe 2 hours at the most prep and baking. These take much longer, waiting while the pops cool, time to dip and decorate, melting the chocolate, etc. So make sure you have at least a couple hours to dedicate to this, with things to keep you busy in between the steps, while they are in the fridge.

8. Melting chocolate in the microwave was not so easy. I did not want to melt more chocolate than necessary and the bowls I used to melt in were too shallow. I think if I would have been more liberal with the amount I melted, or used a double boiler to keep the chocolate a liquid state longer, it would have been more of a dipping procedure, and not a spoon burial of the red velvet cake balls.

My next post will be on how to make these, and the mistakes I made and tips on how to prevent them. With my step by step pictures, of course.