Halloween Cake Pops

I saw these on the cover of Family Circle magazine and instantly wanted to make them. After buying everything (a rather expensive indeavor when you add the lolly-pop sticks, Styrofoam, and chocolate), at 10:30 the night before we (I conned Joel into helping me) were ready to roll. the chocolate melts, lolly-pop sticks, styrofoam were all found at Michael's Craft store.

I recommend baking the cake (store box cake mix) a few days before.

Once it is cool, crumble it up into small pieces.

Add store bought frosting (in no way are these good for you, hello transfat). only use 3/4 of the container, otherwise they'll be too wet.

roll into balls about the size of a walnut. if done properly, 1 cake should yield about 48 balls. put the cake balls onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper and put into the freezer, cover. you can do up to this part, days or even a week or two ahead.

I recommend watching the video - the shortening does help immensely to get the chocolate to the perfect consistancy.

Also mini M&M can be used for many different things - eyes, nose, stems. chocolate chips make good animal ears. we decorated everything at once. Joel dipped the cake pops and I decorated and put them in the Styrofoamto set up.

lessons learned - think ahead about transporting. the largest piece of Styrofoam is not easily transported with 2 car seats. have 2 people handy when ready to decorate. the first few will not be perfect, that's ok. the food markers are not vibrant - get the paint if you want something defined. keep the cake balls cold prior to dipping, they'll have a tendency to crumble otherwise

In these pictures I made 3 cakes - devil's food with chocolate frosting, vanilla with vanilla, and lemon with cream cheese. We started decorating around 10:30 at night and finished at 1.