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Cake Pops! Limited Edition Candy Melts and New Methods

Hi All! Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! I made cake pops as my Easter dessert – I was so happy with the way they came out! Let’s begin.

 I went to Michael’s to get some Wilton Candy Melts. I have worked with the pink vanilla melt before, and loved the results. Imagine my surprise when I see Limited Edition Candy Melts in Marshmellow, Orange Crème and Key Lime Pie! I have only seen chocolate and vanilla, so I grabbed the Orange Crème and Vanilla candy melts to offer some variety. The Orange Crème was interesting – it was a little too sweet for me but my fiancé and others liked it. I thought it was a nice change from the usual vanilla or chocolate, and thought the orange was very spring! I also picked up Disco Dust from Michael’s – it’s very fine glittery sugar. I topped the orange pops off with the disco dust, and used my edible candy hearts for the pink. I was surprised at how good the candy melt held the glitters, and thought it dressed up the pops for Easter =)

 I used my BabyCakes Cake Pop maker, and made the vanilla recipe that came with the device. I’ve found that it’s very trial and error using the cake pop maker – if you underfill them, you don’t get a nice round pop (kind of looks like a football) and if you overfill, you end up having to trim the excess burnt cake off the pop. The good thing is – this recipe makes 4 dozen cake pops. So if you mess up the first batch like I did, you still have a lot left to work with. I read a helpful tip online – after the cake pops are cooled, freeze them for 15-20 minutes. This worked well when dipping them in the candy melt – often times the pop slips off the stick because the cake is too soft. Freezing them hardens up the cake so it stays more firmly on the stick. I still had a few that were close calls but not nearly as many as before. Thought I’d share!

I also took a different approach to dipping the pops into the candy melts. Instead of using the microwave method, my wonderful fiancé made a make shift double broiler on our stove top and helped me heat up the melts that way. This worked well, and kept the melts at just the right consistency. It took a few tries to get the right temperature, but once we did it was smooth sailing from there. When you use the microwave method, the candy melts thicken up too quickly and you have to keep reheating it. NOT fun. I will the double broiler method going forward, more convenient and better results! Greg also helped to decorate the cake pops, and boasts that the ones he did are the best, HA!

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter! xoxo