Pinterest Finds: How to Make Starbucks Like Birthday Cake Pops

Last year I attempted to make cake pops and it was a total disaster. After seeing pretty Pinterest cake pop tutorials  I decided to make them again.

Here are the cake pops that I did last year. I put way too much buttercream in the cooked cake mix (I always use Wilton’s buttercream icing for frosting). I refrigerated for about 45 minutes, and the cake pops still fell apart. They would barely hold to the lollipop sticks. When I tried to dip them into the chocolate, they would just fall off. We decided to make cake balls since I clearly didn’t know what I was doing.

I gave up making cake pops or cake balls last year and resorted to blowing my money at Starbucks. Going to Starbucks was no longer a hot mocha adventure anymore. With my two growing kids, they realized that Starbucks was the “cake pop” place and wanted a cake pop each time we went there. At $3.00 for two cake pops, I got sick of it no matter how yummy they are.

What You Will Need to Make Cake Pops 

• Cake Pop Machine (optional)
• Lollipop sticks
• Wilton Candy Melts
• Cake batter (buy a cake mix box or make your own from scratch)
• Sprinkles
• Wilton icing bag (optional, this is to fill the cake maker machine)
• Styrofoam or something to hold the finished cake pops

This past weekend we used a Michael’s coupon and bought the Babycakes Pop Cake Maker for $15 (after coupon). If you do not want to buy a cake pop maker (highly recommended), you will need to bake a cake first. After the cake cools, break up the cake and mix with frosting. Roll cooked cake mix and frosting into cake balls. Then freeze for 15 minutes. As you can see from my example above, I added too must frosting and it would not stick no matter how long I refrigerated it. I probably should have placed the cake balls in the freezer.

The Starbucks cake pops do not have buttercream on the inside of the cake pop (says my husband, but I am pretty sure he is right). Many people say that a true cake pop has buttercream on the inside. I like the Starbucks cake pops, so I’m going to leave out the buttercream for this post.

In addition to the cake pop machine, we also purchased Wilton Pink Candy Melts and the Wilton Chocolate Candy Melts. In the disaster above, I did not use candy melts. I believe we just used baking chocolate or something like that. For the cake pop recipe, we bought a Pillsbury yellow cake box mix. I usually make cakes from scratch, but it’s getting harder to find the time to do that lately. If you DO use a cake box mix, it was recommended by the Amazon reviews to use milk instead of water. That is exactly what we did. Our box of cake mix called for one cup of water, so we used one cup of milk instead. The reason why is because you don’t want the cake batter to be too runny/watery. You want a firm texture so the cake ball can hold on to the lollipop stick.

We used a Wilton icing bag to fill the Babycakes Pop Cake Maker with the cake batter (I guess you could use a spoon too, but it was suggested to use something to pour the cake batter into the holes). After heating for just a few minutes, the cake balls came out great! We had no problems using the machine at all.

If you read the Amazon reviews for the cake maker, some of the reviews refer to the cooked cake balls leaving rings around the cake ball looking like the planet Saturn. You want the cake balls to look like “Jupiter”.  Just trim the excess “rings” off the cake ball. We ate Saturn’s rings.

We used a small crock pop to melt the candy melts. After the candy was melted, we put the cake ball onto a lollipop stick. I was afraid the cake was going to fall off the stick. Instead of dipping a cake pop straight down into the candy, I suggest you swirl the cake pop into the candy melts so it won’t fall of the stick. The weight off the candy melts could weigh down the cake if you aren’t careful.

When cake pop is covered, sprinkle with sprinkles! Sit the cake pop in a styrofoam block. As you can see below I forgot to take pics of the pink cake pops so here are the chocolate covered cake pops.

This is what the cake pop looks like when it has been eaten. Nice and firm yellow cake.

Here are some other cake pop tutorials online that I found on Pinterest.

Red, white and blue cake pops- great for 4th of July

Rudolph cake pops

Recipe

Another recipe

This book is from the queen of cake pops, Bakerella:

Cake Pops: Tips, Tricks, and Recipes for More Than 40 Irresistible Mini Treats

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