CAKES ON A STICK

We are back from having a healthy son (7lbs 4oz) and ready to get back to baking and blogging with all my sugar loving friends. We have teamed up with the WhatToExpect group and will be having an amazing give away coming up soon!

I wanted you to know about a new feature we will be doing on HeroCakePops called:

Cake Pop Sundays

We will be featuring cake pops from the HeroCakePops Flickr group: Cakes On A Stick. If you would like a chance for your cake pop creation to be featured on HeroCakePops with a link back to your page or flickr account just post your yummy creations in the group. I will pick a photo to feature every Sunday. We are an equal cake pop creation group. Post your gooey cake pop mess you made with your little spawn or your Creme DE cake pop master piece.

I am glad I can finally rejoin my blogging sweets and share some delicious times.

Now for all those emailing and facebooking me for pictures of the little guy here you go:

I am in love and we are super blessed. Thanks for all the well wishes.

Here comes the bride..

Right now we are in the "throw some scraps together and testing phase" but in May we will be doing a huge wedding cake pop spread for all our summer brides out there who like to do it yourself!

Here is a not so glamours peek at our wedding cake pop test batches:

There will be brides and grooms, glitter and pearl decorated cake pops so stay tuned!

Paint Your Sweets Green St. Patty's Day!

I know. I know. It is about to be a new holiday and I am about to tell you how it's my favorite. They are all my favorite but can you blame a girl? I like to party. Of course this St. Patty's Day I can't partake of the best adult holiday tradition ever (Green Beer) but I can still get festive with it. So lets paint ourselves green and paint our sweets green too!

First we need supplies: I bought all the following supplies at Party City in their huge St. Patty's Day isle.



This cute package of cookie cutters is just what we need. We are going to use the
littlest cookie cutter to form our St. Patty's Day cake pops.



We are going to use green candy melts from Wilton (you can use what ever brand you love and I will
use Wilton because I like how it tastes the best) to dip our cake pops. I also bought an orange bag
of candy melts since orange is a huge color is St. Patty's Day as well.

These are actually cup cake toppers but will work perfectly for our
cake pops as well.

Now we shape our cake pops:

Follow basic cake pop making instructions (bake your cake, let it cool, mix in half a can of frosting to cooled crumbled cake and stir until dough like texture).

We are going to use the smallest clover cookie cutter in the package to make our cake pop shapes.

I turn the cookie cutter with the cutter portion side facing down. I then use my ice cream scoop to scoop out a small portion
of my cake pop batter. I push the batter into the cookie cutter until the thing is packed with cake pop batter.

After it is packed with cake pop batter flip over the cookie cutter and use your thumb to push out the new shape
you formed. Always push from the small cookie cutter side toward the large front to avoid distorting
your shape.

Get your dip/sprinkle on:



I found these sprinkles at Party City in the St. Patty's Day isle and thought they were super festive!



Orange is a huge color on St. Patty's Day along with traditional green so I had to give orange some love too!

If only I could have green beer to go with the green cake pops.

Got Chocolate Molds? Well I am going to show you how to use your favorite chocolate molds
with your cake pops.
       Step 1: Melt chocolate or candy melt
       Step 2: Fill your chocolate mold with the melted candy melts or chocolate and let harden fully.
       Step 3: Once the chocolate mold is hard, leave the chocolates in the mold. Dip your cake pop
                    in the melted candy melts, tap off excess candy melt, and then turn the cake pop upside
                    down onto the top of the harden chocolate in the mold. Let the cake pop harden.
      Step 4: Once the cake pop outer candy melt coating is harden pop the chocolate out of the mold like 
                   normal and the chocolate piece in the mold will be glued to the cake pop.

I let the bottom mold piece harden and then placed the freshly dipped cake pop upside down to "dry"
on the chocolate piece. Once it "drys" it will be glued to the chocolate piece in the mold and you will
have a cake pop with a cute design on top.

I dipped just the sides of this cake pop in sprinkles and left the top clear so the candy melt on the top of the
cake pop would act like glue as it dried to the chocolate mold piece.

Just make sure you let the chocolate piece in the mold harden before you begin dipping and placing cake pops.

St. Patty's Day fun on a stick:

If you want the Happy St. Patty's Day words to be more visible you could paint the letters with edible
disco dust or use a edible marker to color in the letters.

Four Leaf Clover Cake Pops:

Irish Cupcake Cake Pops:

I wanted to have fun with my favorite 3D chocolate cupcake mold as well!

This is my 3D cupcake chocolate mold. You can mix and match color since you harden
the cupcake top and bottom separately.

These are all yummy chocolate!

Once the cupcake mold was read I dipped the cake pop and then before it started to "dry"
I placed the cupcake on top of the cake pop. The top of the just dipped cake pop
acts like glue as it hardens to hold the cupcake up.

Got Cupcake Toppers you are dying to use? Well your cake pop can use them too!

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!

PS: Because I have had a few questions on this I thought I would give you a little behind the scenes action of photographing cake pops. I am getting better as I go but it is still hard getting everything right.
My photography friends say lighting is the key. I am going to eventually invest in what they call a light box for my food. Until then this is what I came up with:

Beggars can't be choosers lol. I steal my lamp from the living room to help add
extra light to the kitchen. I use my laundry basket (forgive it's fullness) to help prop
up the lamp.

My boyfriend made this amazing cake pop stand out of two cake boards. He just drilled matching holes in them
and placed pegs between the two boards. I use my daughters construction paper as my
backdrops!

And holding up our make shift backdrop is two heavy bottles of what I have on hand.

DazzlePop Diva begins foray into Cake Pop Land!

Happy Valentines' Day! It's a big day around here at casa Densel. As you can see, it's my first post on Hero Cake Pops and I'd like to introduce myself formally. I'm Alicia and I'm known around here as the DazzlePop Diva. Ok, maybe not here (re: this is my first post :/).

First of all, I've only been making cake pops for about 6 weeks. I got an awesome book from my Sissy (who runs this fantastic blog) and decided that I was going to try making them. I have plenty of eager neighbors to use as guinea pigs in addition to a husband and two adorable boys.

My very first batch of cake pops resulted in a request to make cake pops for a birthday. I wanted to make something referencing rock and roll music, so I came up with RockStar DazzlePops. Here are a few pictures of the finished results.




My next batch was an orange flavored cake with white coating and orange Dazzle. These were very simple, but the orange cake was an unexpected taste bud treat!


I wasn't pleased with the appearance of these cake balls, but to my own fault; I was in a hurry to meet and pick up my son from the school bus. I will certainly need to give myself more time for Round Two of Diva vs. Orange DazzleBalls.

And now to the Grand Finale. At 3 pm EST, my son is having his kindergarten Valentines' Day Party. I didn't want to send in heart shaped cookies because (as you will ALL probably figure out) I like to make an impression. So I sent in these instead!!!




I started with plain white cake batter and added neon pink liquid food color. The baked cake looked like this:

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I used white frosting to make the balls and white candy melts to dip into.


And then on to the best part: turning them into DazzlePops!






I'm sure it's totally obvious that this is my first blog post, but bear with me...I'll deliver the finesse later. Right now, I gotta go get ready for that Valentines' Day Party!! I really hope you enjoyed my post and if you have any comments or questions, I'd love to hear them!
Alicia the DazzlePop Diva