Tips for Perfect Cake Pops

Cake Pops have certainly gained lots of popularity over the last year or two. I often find that people are very intimidated to make them, but they are a lot simpler to make than you think.

Here are some tips for Perfect Cake Pops:

1) Cake Pops are simply your favorite cake crumbled up and mixed with your favorite frosting that is then dipped into melted chocolate. Tip one is to check how moist your cake is! Don't follow a standard recipe that tells you to ad x amount of cake and x amount of frosting. If you have a moist cake (ex. you used one of those cake mixes with pudding mix in it) you will barely need any frosting at all!

2) The most tedious and messy part of making cake pops is crumbling the cake and then mixing in the frosting. Guess what....you can use your mixer or even a food processor to save you time! I take the cake and dump it right into my Kitchenaid mixer and let it do all the work. Then I add in frosting a little at a time until the texture is just moist enough to hold a ball shape, that's it!

3) Cake pops look a lot more professional when they are all the same size. A mini cookie scoop looks great, but if you don't have one play around with your measuring spoons. You might just find that one tablespoon + one teaspoon makes you your perfect size cake pop or perhaps you want to go a little bigger or smaller. Either way works, but the measuring spoons help make sure you have a consistent size for each cake pop!

4) Allowing yourself enough time is huge. You can't roll out balls, put a stick in them and then dip them in chocolate. You have to roll out your balls and let them chill. While they are chilling melt your chocolate, dip part of the stick in and then put the stick into the cake pop. Then let them chill again! This will ensure they don't fall off the stick because your chocolate is adhering to your cake pop.

5) Temperature is key when it comes to your chocolate. Overheat it and you will have a clumpy mess! You can get fancy and use a double broiler, but the simplest thing I find to use is your microwave. I like to use a glass for cake pops or you can even use a coffee mug. You don't want your pool of chocolate to be too shallow when you dip so I find using a glass or mug works best, especially when you want more than one color. Simply put your chocolate or candy melting wafers into your glass or mug and heat in the microwave. Stir about every 15-30 seconds and then keep heating until smooth.