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Cake Pops and Graduation

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By Janine Waite ·
Affiliate Disclosure: This Post May Contain Affiliate Links.

Graduation is upon us, and I’m not ready. Here in the Bay Area, graduation is the second week of June. Did I mention I am not ready? I love celebrations and parties and planning parties, but every time I start thinking about my son graduating, I burst into tears because I’m not ready. Is he ready?  Yes, I’m sure he is. He has big plans, college plans, career plans. And he’s going to live a big, beautiful, adventurous life, and I am excited for him. Excuse me, I need to go get a tissue…

~Funny note about the Nester:~
 Janine loves to laugh and we do a lot of giggling and laughing when we are goofing, I mean working, on serious blog projects. During this project, we used her pancake dispenser and it made bodily function noises. Okay fart noises, and we laughed so hard we were on her kitchen floor. Yes, we are mature adults. LOL. 

Ok, I’m back. (deep breathe)

I love to plan parties. For my son’s graduation celebration, I’ve ordered GIANT “2015” mylar balloons, decorations, photos, and food. I’ve sent the announcements and invitations; now I just needed some dessert ideas. Janine and I were talking about it, and we decided we should learn to make CAKE POPS! I’ve seen them on Pinterest and thought they are so cute, but it must be difficult to cut a cake into circles, how do they do that? (I’m blonde). Janine’s sweet neighbor told her she has a cake pop maker and that we could borrow it. We gathered some recipes and got to work.

First, we used this amazing cake pop maker by Babycakes. It works similar to a waffle maker and the little cake pops bake in just three minutes. Did you hear that? Three minutes. I was amazed.

Cake Pops
Get your own Babycakes Mini Cake Pop Maker here.
First, you make your favorite cake mix. I love the Pillsbury Moist Supreme brand with pudding. It’s extra tasty. Once you’ve made your cake mix, you spoon the cake mix into the amazing Babycakes Mini Cake Pop Maker. Wait, did I say spoon? We actually tried spooning, ladling and pouring, but then we got a super brilliant idea to use Janine’s pancake batter dispenser that we picked up at the local hardware store. It worked perfectly to distribute the cake batter evenly with very little mess.

After dispensing the cake batter and waiting three minutes, you pop the little balls of cake out with a toothpick and put them in the freezer. This makes them firm and easier to place on a stick and frost. Next, you commence dispensing the remaining batter into the amazing Babycakes Mini Cake Pop Maker. Wait for three minutes and you have another bunch of cake pops. This is a fun baking activity. Place those beautiful little globes of cake in the freezer, and repeat with remaining batter.
Once you’ve used all of the cake batter, it’s time to prepare your frosting and decorations. 
Graduation Candy
We used white candy melts and vegetable oil to make an amazingly smooth frosting that you can dip the cake pops in. While Janine was stirring, measuring and being a kitchen chemist, I was making green fondant and attempting to create little graduation caps. Fondant is remarkable because it absorbs food color beautifully. We started with white fondant; then I added just a few green drops of color. With some consistent kneading, the fondant absorbed all of the coloring and became a striking solid green. 
Cake Pops close up
We used Wilton’s White Fondantite Fondant and green food coloring.
Cake pops
We firmly placed each sweet smelling cake pop at the end of striped yellow straws. 

cute pops
Sorry, the photo is so blurry. This is the best one I took. Note to self, use your DSLR.

We dipped the cake pops into the creamy frosting and swirled them around so that they looked smooth. Being careful to make sure they don’t look “drippy.” Then, we set them somewhere so, they won’t bump into each other. We put them in a coffee mug and allowed the frosting to firm up.
graduation

Once I had the cap assembled, Janine made a bright yellow frosting with  candy melts and we used her decorating set to make golden tassels. They turned out great. We attempted multiple times to make emoji faces, or cute little smiley faces, but this takes some serious skill. Since, we are beginner cake pop bakers we elected to roll our little graduates in sugar sprinkles. They look outstanding, almost valedictorian! 
celebration of graduation
I’m really excited to make more of these tasty cake pops and I am immensely proud of my graduate. He is an outstanding son, a supportive brother, a wonderful boy, a kind, good-natured, ambitious, crazy, and adventurous soul. (sniff) I better go now, I’m getting the cake pops salty with my tears and no one will want to eat them. 
I hope you try to make cake pops soon, and definitely let us know how they turned out. We’d love to see them.

You can find great icing recipes on the Babycakes website here: www.babycakesshop.com

You can also find some great tips for dipping cake pops at www.sweetopia.com,

Thanks for visiting,

The graduate
My graduate, on top of the world!
Bloopers:
Decorating Cake pops
Attempting to create emoji faces, help.

Mini Cake Baby Maker machine
Before we started using the batter dispenser. Yikes.

Janine Waite
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Comments

  1. Daidri Smythe

    Great post ladies! My niece would love to make these, thanks for a fun project idea for her upcoming visit. 😉 Marci, I can totally relate to the flood of tears you're experiencing! Oh the power of our Mommy hearts! xxx

    Reply

  2. Daniel Morris

    That's interesting. I'm not an expert on that kind of thing, so I can't really comment. Good thanks.

    Reply

  3. Marjorie Kelly

    It is wonderful, the pictures are very nice, I just want to know whether I can use bread maker to do the same thing, thanks

    Reply

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