Cake Pops

My best friend S. bought me a BabyCakes cake pop maker this past Christmas and I have neglected to try it out. So for St. Patrick's Day (yes, it was a few weeks ago), my friend from work and I decided to make some cake pops for work. I did a little research on the best type of recipes and how the machine works.

The machine is lovely purple and contains little wells waiting to be filled with tasty batter. It is basically a waffle maker but instead of a waffle mold it has holes the size of munchkins.

Now, recipes for this machine are fairly elusive. When you search for "cake pops" most recipes that come up are the cake pops that you bake a cake, crumble cake and mix it with frosting, and roll into balls. I was looking for a dense cake mix that would rise in the wells. Many of the reviews said that if you use a basic cake mix the cakes won't rise into a nice round ball shape, they might be a little flat.

Thick batter, don't over mix!!

After reading many reviews and not finding any answers I just picked a recipe and went with it. The recipe called for a boxed cake mix (used yellow cake mix), add an instant pudding packet (store brand), swap milk for the water (I only had light cream so I used that), omit oil, use eggs as directed on the cake mix box. Easy enough?

We mixed the batter, plugged in the machine, and waited for it to preheat. It only took a few minutes. Next we filled the wells so the bottom was almost full, closed the machine, and it took 2-3 minutes for the cakes to be cooked. As you can see in the image from dipping them in the candy coating, they are a little dark. We used toothpicks to roll and dip the pops and then placed them on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet. We let them chill for a few minutes so the candy coating could harden.

Dipping in the candy coating

Also, don't over mix the candy coating. Over mixing it makes it thick and goopy and it won't cover the pops nicely. We added green food coloring to half of the batch after mixing it in the frosting was too thick to cover them smoothly. That was when we decided to make a glaze. It made them look like munchkins. Yum!

Used a toothpick to dip them, removed toothpick prior to serving

We chose not to use the sticks...because we just didn't there was no real reason why. And the cake pop machine did get very hot, we did unplug it a few times when making them.

But the cakes were moist and soft and everything you could hope for in a cake pop. I refrigerated them over night, brought them to work and served them at room temperature. They were one of the first desserts to disappear!

Note: I think they are better with the yellow cake mix than the chocolate cake mix. But then again, I'm not a big chocolate fan...


Cake Pops
Makes approx 60 cakes

1 box mix
Use milk for the water (as directed by cake mix box)
Eggs (as directed by cake mix box)
1 instant pudding mix
Wilton Candy Coating

1. Combine box mix and pudding mix, stir together.
2. In separate bowl, combine Milk and Egg until eggs are pretty scrambled.
3. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Add food coloring if desired.
4. Plug in and preheat cake pop machine.
5. Fill wells with batter and bake approx 2-3 minutes. Check carefully but wait at least this long.
6. Remove with fork and let cool on racks before frosting.
7. Follow instructions on candy coating for melting.
8. Roll cakes in the frosting (add sprinkles here if you'd like!), place on parchment paper covered cookie sheet, and chill.

Glaze Recipe
From All Recipes; amounts below are for 6 servings, used it to cover about 15 cakes.

1 tablespoon and 2-1/4 teaspoons butter
2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon hot water or as needed

1. Melt butter.
2. Combine above ingredients except water.
3. Adding water slowly until desired consistency is reached.

Enjoy!