Cake Pops!

Cake Pops are all the rage these days...
And WOW, are there some ADORABLE cake pops out there!

EEK!

Now, I'm no stranger to cake pops -
Remember when I thought I could just whip up a batch?

BWAHAHAHAAAA!
Yeah, not so much...

One day, while perusing the interwebs...I stumbled upon Beki Cook's Cakes ~ What I was looking for, was someone local who might teach a class on how to make a topsy-turvy/mad hatter cake...

Instead, I found this via Beki's website....
Cake Pops Classes...

Inviting some friends over to learn the tricks of the trade?
Sounds like a GREAT time to me!!

Beki showed up with everything we would need...
(and was able to fit 9 of us around my table in our teeny tiny kitchen!)

She brought us each sections of cake, already made up & ready to go...

Our first instructions were to crumb the cake...

& everyone got busy following instructions...

Then we added a dollop of frosting to the crumbed up cake...

(the ratio is approximately 1 cup of frosting per cake mix)

After mixing...

You'll get some cute little balls like so....

Here are the gals, hard at work making balls of cake!

Beki brought along all of the supplies we would need, including some nice deep glass mugs that she uses to melt the candy coating ~ ah yes, skinny-ish deep glassware to melt the candy! All the better to dunk your cake ball in my dear!

(And all that much harder to retrieve the skier down when your cake ball falls off the stick mid dunk! THAT my friends, is why you should never forget to dip the stick in the frosting BEFORE placing the cake ball on the stick! oops!)

Another great tip we learned? Beki uses a heating pad (cover removed) to keep her glassware and awesome frosting bottles (so so so much easier than icing bags! HELLO!) heated up - think, portable, foldable, lightweight warming tray! GREAT IDEA!

As the cake pops were being created...

A couple of little taste testers showed up...

I think they got a sugar high just from seeing the mass production of cake pops that was going on!

What a fun way to spend a Monday night with girlfriends!!

Kelly & Sam

About half of us have attempted cake pops before ~

but every single one of us learned a thing or two...

Tips like...

~ Add 1 Tablespoon of Vegetable Oil to the candy melts...do not let the candy melts get too hot

~ Only work with 5 or so cake balls at a time...keep the rest in the fridge while you work, in fact, make your cake and cake balls a day ahead of time and put them in the fridge overnight...THEN, the next day, tackle the decorating - that sounds like SO much more fun to me than trying to tackle everything at once! AND...then your cake will be nice and solid!

~ You CAN use the freezer in a pinch - but if you do, you are at high risk for cracking candy coating! Temperature changes ya know!

~ Do not be afraid to tap off the excess candy melt. Gently tap the stick on the side of the melt dish until all the excess is off...spinning the cake pop almost guarantees the cake ball will fall into the melted candy - use the tap method!

~ Instead of a frosting bag, get yourself some of those plastic bottles from your local craft store for creating your swirls & lines, letters, etc (think the ketchup and mustard bottles at some restaurants, only white!! and, with candy melts, NOT ketchup and mustard!)

~ Go immediately from the candy melt to the sprinkle station - cake balls set up fast!

What a fun fun night for me and the girls!

Beki was a wonderful teacher ~ patient with our shenanigans...

I can't remember the last Monday night I had that was this much fun!

And...my gift for hosting the party?

A cute little cake pops gift pack! Awesome!

Can't wait to put my new skills to use again soon!

You can read Jen's recap by clicking here!

Anyone else have any great cake pop tips to share?