Fun Day Auction Cake Pops

Last year for Reagan's school fundraiser "Fun Day" I entered 2 custom cake pop items into the silent auction...each of them earning $20.  The first one was won by my parents and my mom requested turkey cake pops for Thanksgiving.

I haven't made these for awhile because they are a true labor of love!  The pops themselves aren't bad at all, but the detailing of the faces and the addition of the feathers on the back are tiring.  The legs are broken stick pretzels, the faces are made out of brown pretzel M&Ms with mini colored "kisses" for the eyes and gobble, and then candy corn for the feathers, which are held on by more chocolate almond bark.

I did a better job of them this time, than the first time and was happy with how they turned out.  Mom liked them too as did the kiddos so all was well!

Reagan's Birthday Treats: Part 2

She picked out cake pops long before that November day when we actually took them to school.  I was surprised that after last year's Frogs, she didn't want to do a green pop this year.  She picked out small ice cream cone pops instead!  I loved them and they were super easy to make.

Thanks to Bakerella and her great cookbook for the inspiration for them!  I did use a pretzel M&M on the top instead of a peanut one, since there is someone with allergies in Reagan's class, but after carefully looking I saw that they are made on the same machines, so this didn't really help me and I ended up leaving some without the "cherry" on top.  I made them even easier since I used the kid sized cones, instead of cutting down regular waffle cones to size.  As you can see, I used my mini-muffin tin to hold them while they dried and the only drawback came when I tried to slide it across the counter and it stuck a bit and then gave way making most of them tip over and causing some to smudge!

The only bad part about these was the lack of weight in the bottom!  The were hard to transport since they didn't have sticks to hold them in a carrier and they were so top heavy they couldn't ride very well standing up.  As you can see I used small tea towels and washrags (all clean) to help brace them in the dishes I took.

Next time I try these I think I will pour some candy melts into the base of the cone to give it some added weight!

Reagan's Birthday Treats: Part 1

Reagan had her first "friends" birthday party this year and so she planned for cupcakes for the party, cake pops for school treats and an ice cream cake (which I didn't have to make) for her family party.

She worked hard and helped me to make the cupcakes, which were a Funfetti cake mix with chocolate (I was surprised by this!) icing and sprinkles!  She picked out some adorable purple tulip muffin cups to use!

The finished Product

Past Pops

I made these cake pops in the shapes of apples (with pretzel stems) and pumpkins (with tic tac stems).  I made a lemon cake and a spice cake and took these for the bake sale at Wil's preschool fall festival fundraiser.

Teacher Appreciation

I decided to give the traditional teach appreciation gift a face lift.  I made apple shaped cake pops!  I made them with a lemon cake/lemon frosting mix and they turned out tasting great.  I was planning to use a spice cake to hint at the fall theme of apples, but I didn't get the mix thawed in an unexpected time crunch to get them made.

You can see I used both a red (which I created using some red and pink melts - due to lack of red) and I used a lime green and I think both shades looked good on my apples!  I also used the ends of pretzel sticks to make the stems on the top.

Cinco de Mayo pops

I had some cake just lying around so I decided to try to make some chili pepper cake pops in honor of Cinco de Mayo.  They turned out really cute, but I think next time I will choose to coat them differently.

I started after I shaped them (using my mini cookie cutters from Pampered Chef) I dipped them into the lime green color on the tops by hand.  After they rested and firmed up I dipped them into the red melts and added the stick to them.  I think in the future I will just dip the entire pop with the stick in the red candy melts and then I will go back and redip the tops in a green color.  If I had had easy access to a darker green I would have just used that, but I was using the lime green for another pop project so I added the green sanding sugar to give them some pizzazz and also to darken the color up.  They turned out great and I am so glad I made them, but have learned a little something for next time too!  Win...win in my book!

Strawberry Cookie Pizza

I bought a bunch of fresh strawberries and wanted to come up with a new way to fix them and we ended up with strawberry pizza.  It is a sugar cookie layered with some fresh strawberry puree and cream cheese, then topped with strawberry slices and tiny chocolate chips.

It tasted really yummy but it didn't last until day 2...the toppings really caused the cookie to get soft and mushy (by the 3rd day!).  Next time we will just layer the cream cheese and then add the puree over it more like tomato sauce, rather than mixing the 2 ingredients ahead of time...Reagan made comments about it looking like vomit (cracking me up!!!) even though she liked the way it tasted!

Easter treats

I had a great idea to make some bird nests (chocolate Rice Krispies and Fiber One cereal) with some edible Easter grass and M&Ms for our Easter trip to Jefferson City this year.  We also made up some giant Rice Krispie treat eggs that were hollow and filled with Starburst jelly beans.  The kids had fun helping and were able to help with quite a bit of the work, so Mom was happy too!

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that we forgot to take our carrier with all the treats in it, so no one actually got to enjoy them, except for us...after the fact.

PINKALICIOUS!

Reagan's Girl Scout troop had a Pinkalicious party to celebrate all things pink just like in the great books by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann.  What is more pinkalicious than teaching the girls how to decorate up some cake pops!  I made a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting mixed in for the cake balls and then had a whole slew of pink toppings for the girls to add after they finished dipping them.  It took awhile, but each girl got to fix up 2 pops and they all had a fun time!
I also made up little cupcakes and labels using my Cricut machine so the girls could decorate them and label their pops so we would know who's was who's.

I will post pictures once I get them from one of the other moms that had a camera...ours was still out of commission since I dropped and broke it at Funday :(  Thankfully Best Buy came to the rescue with our extended warranty and we got it back shortly after!

Ridgeway Cake Pops

I made 3 cakes into cake pops for Reagan's school Fun Day fundraiser.  I made a chocolate cake into blue pops, a lemon cake into yellow pops and a white cake into white pops.  The Ridgeway school colors are Blue and Gold so I wanted to have pops with lots of school spirit.

This was my first time to use sanding sugar to decorate the pops.  It turned out to be fairly easy and they look super cute!  I also found out that it doesn't take much in the way of supplies (for about 1/2 of a cake I only used about 1/3 of a large container of sanding sugar).

Some of my pops were sold in the Bake Sale/Country Store and one batch of them went into the silent auction as a sample for a winning bidder to get a 36 cake pop custom order in the near future.  I'm looking forward to see what they want and making something new!

Red, White and Blue Holiday

While making some batches of cake pops for Reagan's school Bake Sale during thier annual fundraiser, I decided to experiment with some of the leftover cake and I made 3 stars.  I then dipped them in red, white and blue colors to make them look nice and festive for the 4th of July.

I was pleased with how they turned out and I think they would be fairly simple to make with the only time consuming part being the forming of the stars (for which I used my Pampered Chef mini cookie cutter).

Heart Pops for the Girl Scouts

For the second year I made heart shaped strawberry flavored cake pops for Reagan.  This year she took them to her Feb Girl Scout meeting for snack time.

Pink Oatmeal Cookies

So I tried for the first time to make my own oatmeal cookies (with chocolate chips!).  I learned 2 things from this.  1.  I wanted to make them pink, but didn't add nearly enough red food coloring...when wanting to make pink or red, it will bake up much lighter than the batter so better to overdue than under-do it, they just didn't look right.  2. They need to be baked less than it says.  I used my new stone bar pan (from Christmas) and my trusty old pizza stone to make them and I loved the way the bottoms weren't overcooked, but they were much more crunchy than I would have liked.

St. Valentine's Strawberries

For the second year in a row we made chocolate covered strawberries, the only difference is that this year Wil got to help and not just Reagan.  The kids had a lot of fun and did a super job (only a few had chocolate leaves or were lacking good coverage).  I think we all agreed that tasting was the best part!

Froggie Pops

Reagan requested frog cake pops for her birthday school treat this year, and I must say I was disappointed she didn't want turkeys but I WAS happy with how much easier the frogs are than the turkeys!  I even added green food coloring into the white cake I made so it was green inside and out :) 

These were simple just dip, add eyes and then later put on the mouths and noses.  Some hungry ones got tongues too.  They were a big hit at school!

One yummy bite :) (you can see the ones with tongues drying in the background, too bad I didn't get any pictures of these by themselves)

Reagan's birthday cake

For her 6th birthday Reagan wanted a Barbie birthday party so I decided to make a Barbie cake.  She of course wanted Barbie in a green dress, but since this was my first time to use fondant, everything ended up being white LOL.  I used a recipe for fondant that calls for using marshmallows, water, and powdered sugar which makes it taste super yummy!  It took a LOT longer to get it mixed than I would have expected so I didn't have enough time to perfect my skills or try to color it.  There are 3 holes just below her belt and that is because I tried to put some picks in there so Barbie could hold up the little birthday cake on a tray in front of herself, but it ended up being too heavy so the little cake made it way onto the cake in front of her.

The cake looked ok, if you didn't look at it with Kerry Vincent (judge for food network cake challenges) eyes, but there is a lot that could have been done to make it look better.  I think next time I will plan to try to find some store made fondant and see how it works with rolling it out and working with it.  I also think that if I hadn't been trying to mold something in 3D it would have been more successful :)

Baby Shower Pops

I had so much fun making the cake pops for my sister, Kathleen's, baby shower in April.  The shower had a jungle theme and we ended up making a diaper cake and used that help display the pops.  I used both long and short lollipop sticks to add some dimension to the final display.  I made Lions, Tigers and Monkeys...oh my!

Soup to Share

Reagan made these jars of soup to share and I fixed them up with labels from my Strech your imagination cartridge.  The fall theme one we gave to her teacher and the winter one went in a gift basket for her school last fall.

Easter Cake Pops

I have been getting more and more brave with cake pops over time (I love the Bakerella Cake Pops Cookbook I got for Christmas).  I made some bunnies - both pink and white, chicks and little Easter baskets (which were terribly cute, but difficult to eat).

More Cake Pops

Here are the strawberry Valentine's heart cake pops I made for Reagan's class and also the football shaped pops I made for Wil's birthday to go with his Grover cake.