Who doesn't love cake pops? Well, some people call them a gooey mess that tastes uncooked, so the folks who design gadgets to sit and get dusty on your top shelves came up with a cake pop PAN. A tiny primer...traditional cake pops are nothing more than a crumbled up cake mixed in with a binder, usually canned frosting, then shaped and dipped on a stick. Cake pop pans let you just use cake batter so they are less sweet and more like little dipped cupcakes. I decided to make both, with a Mickey head flair, and decide what worked best.
After my batter was done I greased and floured the heck out of the pans and carefully filled them. I discovered I needed to cook them longer than you'd think, about 23 minutes.
Tricky part #1...how long to cool to get those puppies to pop out? Who knows? I cooled a bit and cooled longer and still had issues with the pops separating in half when the top was removed. All in all, I lost 7 pops to damage, but still ended up with plenty of pops to attempt to dip.
These do not come out nice and round, they come out looking like Saturn or a UFO. Don't worry about trimming your pops right now, put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them then store in a Ziploc until ready to dip. You want the pops to be cold for dipping, so I found it easy to just freeze, trim the rim while frozen and then store the pops in the refrigerator and work in batches on dipping day.
Up next, I make traditional cake pops.
I bought the Nordic Ware cake pop pans and they are a pretty nifty blue. You pour the batter into one side then put on the top and slide a little bar to lock and voila. Easy, right? Except searching online showed multitudes of disappointed users with the pops sticking and splitting and various other misfortunes. There were many recipes published to avoid this and I settled on the one that had the most positive reviews. The recipe is: a box of cake mix, a package of instant pudding, 3 eggs and 1 cup milk (no oil). I chose a spice cake mix and gingerbread pudding mix.
After my batter was done I greased and floured the heck out of the pans and carefully filled them. I discovered I needed to cook them longer than you'd think, about 23 minutes.
Little nubbies will come out of the overflow holes and these are a fun snack.
Tricky part #1...how long to cool to get those puppies to pop out? Who knows? I cooled a bit and cooled longer and still had issues with the pops separating in half when the top was removed. All in all, I lost 7 pops to damage, but still ended up with plenty of pops to attempt to dip.
These do not come out nice and round, they come out looking like Saturn or a UFO. Don't worry about trimming your pops right now, put them on a cookie sheet and freeze them then store in a Ziploc until ready to dip. You want the pops to be cold for dipping, so I found it easy to just freeze, trim the rim while frozen and then store the pops in the refrigerator and work in batches on dipping day.
Up next, I make traditional cake pops.