The other day as I was scouring Pinterest and Foodgawker for some Halloween baking inspiration, I came across The Decorated Cookie’s googly-eyed monster cupcakes. I loved the simplicity of the design and the fact that they were just kind of cute in a silly sort of way. But I decided to go a different route with the googly-eyes and instead whipped up a batch of monster cake pops!
Monster Cake Pops
Yields about 2 dozen cake pops
For the cake pops:
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
4 tbsp. baking cocoa
1/4 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/2 container frosting
For the coating:
500 grams candy melts OR white chocolate (5 bars) and food gel coloring
Googly-eyes
Additional materials:
Lollipop sticks
Clean tweezers
Ribbon and cellophane (optional packaging)
Start by making your cake. This is something you can even do the night before as it needs to be completely cool before you start working with it. To make the cake, preheat your oven to 350* Fahrenheit (175* Celsius) and line a 9″ pan with parchment paper (you don’t have to worry about being neat with it since you’ll just crumble the cake later). In a large bowl, beat together the vegetable oil, granulated sugar, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, and eggs. Mix until all ingredients are well combined and there are no lumps. Gently stir in the cocoa powder until there’s no longer any powder on top of the batter. Add the milk and beat until the batter is smooth. Add the flour and mix until the batter thickens and is lump free. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove the cake from the pan and allow it to cool completely before proceeding.
To make the cake pops, crumble the cake in a large bowl. Add a few scoops of frosting and begin mixing, adding more frosting as needed until the cake begins to clump, but isn’t sticky to the touch. Roll your cake mix into quarter size balls and place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment. In a microwave safe bowl, melt your candy melts or white chocolate using 30 second intervals and stirring after each interval. If you’re making the tinted white chocolate, drop a few drops of the food gel coloring of your choice into the chocolate once it’s melted and stir until the chocolate is a uniform color. Once the chocolate is melted (and colored), dip the end of each lollipop stick into the melted chocolate and insert it half way into each cake ball. Set the cookie sheet with the cake pops into the freezer to firm up for a few minutes.
Once the chocolate gluing the sticks to the cake has hardened, remove the cake pops from the freezer. If the melted chocolate is too thick, you might want to thin it a little bit with some vegetable oil before dipping your cake pops. To coat the cake pops, dip the cake pop into the chocolate, turn to coat all the way around, and gently pull it back out. Allow any excess chocolate to drain off of the pops before setting them aside (I like to use a piece of styrofoam or cardboard with holes in it to stand my cake pops up while they dry). Before the chocolate dries, drop your googly eyes onto the cake pops using a pair of tweezers (if you need them) to position the eyes. If you don’t have googly eyes available, or don’t want to buy them, you can easily whip up a batch of your own the night before using white and black royal icing with a 20 second consistency. For more information about royal icing, check out this post.
Let the cake pops dry completely before packaging them. To speed up the process, you can set them in the freezer or refrigerator for a few minutes. I packaged mine with little cellophane bags, and black and orange ribbon.
Happy baking!
Sources:
Cake pop making technique adapted from Bakerella
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