Cake Pops

My daughter and I attempted cake pops for the first time.  It was a success and a fail all in one. We started out intending to make panda cake pops since she is a panda lover.  But after that wasn't working out too well, we gave up (after decorating only 3) and just did simple cake pops....success because they tasted really good!  
The food writers that we bought for our panda pops did not work as planned, making it hard to draw on the mouths like we had thought.  We'll put the pic of our attempts down below....it's like one of those failed pinterest pics!
Anyhow here are the steps to some simple cake pops and if you want to go all fancy on them, it can be done....but here are the basics!

You will need: 1 box of cake mix and the ingredients to prepare it.
chocolate or candy coating
9oz. of frosting
lollipop sticks...25-35
more candy coating for embellishing with a pastry bag (use a contrasting color or coating)

First just make one box mix of cake...any flavor and bake it in a 9" by 13" pan. After it is cooled, crumble the entire cake into a bowl till it is all fine crumbs and mix in 9 oz. of frosting (we used homemade butter cream, but you could also use store bought.) I think the flavor of the cake pop is really based on what kind of frosting you use here, so that is why I avoided the store bought version. I kind of think they taste like plastic, but that is just me.

Next, roll them into balls of about an inch to an inch and a half diameter. We tried to use some cake pop presses to get them perfectly even, but it turned out to be easier to shape them by hand. Ours weren't perfectly round....but we decided to roll with it anyway. Cool in the refrigerator for about 2 hours or more before the next step.  You can also freeze them to deal with at another time.

Dip lollipop stick ends in a tiny bit of the melted chocolate or white chocolate candy coating.  Then put it through the cake ball about 3/4 of the way. Next, you will dip the cake ball into the melted coating or chocolate. We melted the white candy coating in the microwave in a Pyrex measuring cup so that it was a narrow area and we didn't have to use a lot of extra.  After dipping....it will be dripping...so hold it and turn each one over the melted coating for a minute. We had some little Styrofoam blocks that we set them in to dry.  You could also use a bowl of dry beans or rice to hold the sticks right after dipping.  They dry pretty quickly, so you could change them out with the new ones as the previous ones dry.

As they dried, we just laid them on wax paper on a plate. Here were our attempts at making some pandas.  The icing for the eyes wasn't really working out for us and neither was the edible pen we were drawing the mouths with! I didn't mind too much, but she wanted them to look EXACTLY like the pictures we were looking at. So she decided she would just have them be more plain....with a purpose of eating vs. being beautiful!!

So now it's off to bring them somewhere else...so that we don't have to eat them all (minus a few of them of course that will stay here, but not for long)!!