Monster Cake Pops

I am so excited to share these! Not only do they look amazing but they are absolutely delicious! I spotted some candy eyeballs by Wilton in a local store the other day and I knew they would be perfect for some Monster cake pops!!

I started by making halving the chocolate cake recipe that I shared last week. You can find the recipe for my favorite chocolate cake here! I lined cake pan with parchment paper, because it makes it easer to remove the cake (yay for less mess!) and it doesn't matter what the cake looks like because you'll be mixing it up with icing later!

I set the cake in the fridge to cool and started on my favorite buttercream frosting. Start my whipping 1/2 cup of unsalted butter with 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract with an electric mixer. It is important that your butter is softened rather than melted... I soften my butter by microwaving it for 5 seconds at a time until it is soft enough.

Add 2 cups of confectioner's sugar and 1 tablespoon of milk to the butter/vanilla mixture and continue to whip with electric mixer for about 2 minutes until the icing is well combined and light. Once you are done with the electric mixer use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl and make sure all the ingredients are well mixed.

Cut your cooled cake into cubes and continue to break in a medium sized mixing bowl using a fork. As the cake is beginning to crumble more and more add 2 large dollops of your prepared icing and mix it into the cake until the mixture begins to hold together (a little like cookie dough).

I have a cake pop tray to help solidify the shape of the cake pop, but you could easily roll the dough into balls and set it on wax paper to set. I used a heaping tablespoon of dough to form each ball and once my tray was full I set it in the freezer to set.

While my cake pops were in the freezer, I separated the remaining icing into 3 bowls and colored them Wilton's Icing Color dye. I made some green, some blue and some purple. Also, while my cake pops were freezing, I melted about 2 tablespoons of milk chocolate chips.

This is obviously a little later in the process, but I just wanted to show how I use the melted chocolate. I used Popsicle sticks, because I didn't have any lollipop sticks on hand and Popsicle sticks worked just fine. I dipped each Popsicle stick into the melted chocolate before pushing it into the cake pops and this really helped them hold better. As the chocolate solidifies, it holds the cake pop in place and prevents it from moving down the Popsicle stick.

I recommend pushing you cake pop sticks into Styrofoam once you have put the cake pop on one end, but guess what!? I couldn't find Styrofoam ANYWHERE yesterday so I used an egg carton. I used a knife to make little holes big enough to fit the Popsicle sticks through and it worked, it held the cake pops. I still recommend using Styrofoam, but an egg carton definitely works!

Once the cake pops were all set on sticks, I filled piping bags with frosting and I used small star piping tips to make points of icing all over the cake pops. This process was TEDIOUS like I almost quit after every cake pop because my hand was cramping and this whole thing just seemed insane. However, I was encouraged to persevere because of how darn cute these little guys are. Once you get the hand of the frosting it moves faster and the end result is definitely worth the hard work!

Once the icing was on, I pushed the candy eyeballs into different paces on the monster pops and you're done!

Happy Independence day! 

Kenzie