Holly Grove Cake Pops

Since I work at a year-round school, this week was actually not the last week of school for me. I have three more weeks to go. However, for track one, Friday was their last day of school. At least until the new school year starts on July 11th. Since two of the teachers I work with would be leaving for the summer, I wanted to make them a little end-of-the-year/I-appreciate-you/thank-you-for-a-great-year gift. I decided to make them little cake pop bouquets, decorated with the school colors. Since cake pops make about 80 at a time, I decided to make them for all 6 teachers and give the other 4 teachers their present early.

Here is how you make cake pops!

Step 1:
Bake a store-bought box cake mix in a 13x9 pan. It can be any flavor you want. Allow the cake to cool and then cut the cake into fourths. Take each 1/4 piece and crumble it very finely into a large bowl. Continue doing this until the entire cake is crumbled in the bowl.

Step 2:
Add an entire tub of store-bought frosting. Again, it can be any flavor you would like. Using the back of a spoon, or even your hands thoroughly combine the cake and frosting together until you get a sticky/moist dough. This is a good time for you to take off your rings!


Step 3:
Line a cookie sheet with wax paper and begin rolling the cake into small 1- 1 1/2 inch balls.

Step 4:
Melt a few pieces of your melting chocolate in a small dish. Take your lollipop sticks and dip one end of the stick into the chocolate. Then place that same end about 1/2 inch into the cake ball. After all the cake balls have a sick, place them in the freezer for 15 minutes. You want the cake balls to be firm enough so that they won't fall of the stick, but if they are too hard, the chocolate coating will start 'sweating.' So 15 minutes is the perfect amount of time.

Step 5:
Take your cookie sheet out of the freezer and get ready to dip! You can get any color chocolate candy coating pieces at Michael's or JoAnn Fabrics. I used orange and purple since these are our school colors. Generally for a whole batch of cake pops you will need 2 bags of candy coating. Melt your candy coating in 30 second intervals in the microwave, stirring after each time until they are all melted. If the mixture is still pretty thick, you can add shortening to thin it out. You want it to be thin enough so that when you dip a spoon it, some chocolate should flow off the spoon.

Dip each cake pop into the melted chocolate. Cover the entire cake ball. Tap your wrist to allow excess chocolate to drip off into the bowl. Place the cake pop into Styrofoam to allow it to dry. If you are decorating your cake pops with sprinkles or other candies that need to be attached, sprinkle them on while the chocolate coating is still wet, then place it in the Styrofoam.

Step 6:
Finish up your cake pops by decorating them any way you please. For these cake pops, I put the extra chocolate coating into a zip lock bag, snipped off a tiny corner and drizzled the chocolate onto the cake pops. I also took that same bag and made "3" on the wax paper. I placed them into the freezer to harden. I then attached them to the cake pops using a dot of the chocolate. Be creative and have fun!

Step 7:
Display them in a fun way! While I was at Michael's buying all the supplies, I ran across these 50% off ceramic containers. I bought all orange ones (again school colors). Once the cake pops were dry and hardened, I cut Oasis [flower arranging foam] to fit the size of my container. I then arranged the cake pops into the oasis in a fun way.

The real challenge was figuring out how to transport these delicate delectables 20 minutes to work the next day. I placed them in a shoe box, put the shoe box the the floor of the drivers seat, with a blanket around the box so that it would not move around. The hardest part was driving slow and taking my turns slow [which if you know me, is not any easy task ;) ]. Thankfully, I made it to work without breaking a single one or having the 3's break!

The teachers loved them! The kids were also every intrigued by them and kept asking what they were and wanting to touch them. I would have made some for the kids, but the county has a rule that students can only eat store-bought, individually packaged goods, which means, no homemade baked goods from me :(

*My cake pop recipes and instructions come from Bakerella. You can find more in-depth and creative ideas from her blog:
bakerella.com or from her book Cake Pops [which I own!]