Going Bananas!

So many of you have asked me how I create these cake pops, so I decided to show everyone step-by-step how I made my latest creations.  I do have to credit Bakerella for the inspiration.  See if you can guess what they are...


The first thing you have to do is make the cake balls and put them on the sticks.  This customer wanted strawberry cake.

Dip the sticks in the chocolate and while the chocolate is still wet, add eyes and ears.  I used peanut butter chips for the eyes that I inserted with the pointed side in, and peach colored jumbo chip sprinkles for the ears.

To give the eyes definition, I added a white confetti sprinkle to the peanut butter chip using a dab of chocolate.

Then I used black chocolate to add more detail to the eyes.  Can you tell what it is yet?

I attached a large peanut butter chip using chocolate and used the black chocolate to add a nose and draw on a mouth with a toothpick.

And voila!  Monkeys!  Its that easy folks!

Sweets for Daisies

A few weeks ago, my friend and mentor, Becky of Beckaboo's cakes, had to leave town unexpectedly due to a family emergency.  Unfortunately, she had an order that needed to be done and delivered while she was gone so she asked if I might be able to do it for her.  After some rearranging, and a lot of help from my dear husband, I got it finished.  


The customer's daughter's Daisy troop was getting their pins and she wanted 30 pops, 12 of them daisies.  I wasn't really sure how to do them, and Becky suggested using a cookie cutter to cut out the daisy shapes then piping on the yellow centers.  Sounds easy enough, right?  


WRONG!  It was actually much more difficult than I thought it would be!  The first few that I made I rolled out too thin, so they literally bent in half when I put the stick in.  I managed to get 12 on sticks, but dipping them was much harder than dipping a ball.  I was terrified I would lose one in the chocolate, that it would bend in half when I was shaking off the excess chocolate.  Fortunately, they didn't but I lost a lot of the shape when the chocolate dried, so I piped on the petals before I piped on the centers.  


Here are the pictures:

I would like to do more of these, I definitely need the practice.  All in all, though, I do think they turned out cute and the arrangement was really cute when it was done.  By the way, I finally figured out how to make my pictures larger.  Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

As promised, here are the pictures of the basket I did for the new year.  I tried to make silver cake pops with luster dust, but they didn't turn out as shiny as I would have liked.  I've watched them use luster dust on all the cake shows I watch, but it never works for me the way it does for them.  Clearly, I need more practice, but the arrangement turned out pretty cute either way.

Here is a close-up of the pops, you can really see the sparkles on the silver pops.

These would be cute for a zebra party mixed in with some pink pops too!

And just as a bonus, I've included a picture of another Christmas arrangement I did.

2011 brought many blessings to my family, and I welcome 2012 with open arms.  Thank you all for your support as I started this new adventure.  Happy New Year to all of you out there in cyberspace, all the best to you and yours!

Merry Christmas!

Just before I left to go out of town I made the most adorable Christmas-themed cake pops.  I made them the evening before we left town and the pictures have been trapped on my laptop for a week, just waiting to be posted in cyberspace.  The order was simple, 30 cake pops, Christmas themed, arranged.  I found the most adorable little box at Hobby Lobby (aka, my new favorite place to spend my money!) on sale for 60 percent off, scoured the internet for some ideas and voila!  A Christmas basket was born.  Here are the pictures of the arrangement followed by the individual pops.  LOVE!

I'll be working on a New Year's basket tomorrow, so stay tuned for those pictures.  I will be trying something new with them-wish me luck!  Merry Christmas!

Cake Pops and Christmas

This has been a crazy couple of weeks; seems everyone is giving cake pops for Christmas this year.  This week alone I made 184 cake pops.  Nothing as spectacular as the penguins from last week, but still cute.  Here are the pictures.

A really "cool" party

This week I kept myself busy making things for a one-year old's birthday party.  The party had a penguin theme.  Here is the invitation:

Cute right?  My friend asked for cupcakes, cake pops, and a smash cake.  She wanted penguin cake pops, which provided a challenge since it is impossible to find black candy melts this time of year.  Apparently, they are only available around halloween.  I was able to get some guidance from a specialty baking shop and found some black candy coloring.  This was my first attempt at coloring chocolate, but it turned out great!  I was worried that the food coloring might change the flavor of the chocolate, and I think it did a little, but they still tasted great.

I made a couple extra pops, so I used one to top the smash cake, I just made him a little hat to match the invitation.  The tree is a fondant "cone" with buttercream foliage.

The cupcakes are just a basic buttercream, with these cute little snowflake sprinkles I found.  The large snowflake is royal icing.  I'm really proud of my piping, it is really improving!

I made a few different snowflake shapes and because I couldn't decide which were my favorites, I decided to use them all.  I think they turned out great!

Here's to Eva, I hope your party is really "cool!"

Vintage Rudolph Cookies

A friend of mine is obsessed with party planning.  She spends her evenings searching party blogs and planning her daughters' birthday parties.  I have to admit, the parties she puts together for her kids are nothing short of amazing; I wish I had her dedication and know-how.  


This year for her oldest daughter's party, she is doing a vintage rudolph theme.  She asked me to make her some rudolph cookies and some "rudolph nose" cake pops, which are just plain red cake pops.  The cake pops were nothing special, but the cookies were another story.  She ordered a printable collection from The TomKat Studio called the "Vintage Rudolph collection."  Are you familiar with this blog?  She has the most amazing graphics, definitely worth checking out!  I have been wanting to try to do some edible image cookies so I had her send me the graphics.  I had them printed and then I adhered them to the cookies.  They turned out better than I could have imagined.  Here is the picture.  

I hope they taste as good as they look!  Happy birthday Emma!