Pumpkin Cake Pops

Let me start off by saying...as cute as these little babies are, they were a pain. And I mean a major pain in the neck. These were without a doubt the most frustrating thing I've made since I've started cooking and baking. I spent the entire evening on these, and I can count the number of cute ones on one hand. I put too much icing in the cake, the candy melts were not melting like they should, the cake balls were defrosting way quicker than I could dip them in the chocolate, the edible marker I just bought today was not writing well on the chocolate at all, and well...that's just to name a few things that went wrong. I ended up wiping the edible marker off several times on some of them before they dried and tried again. Some of them turned out very ugly. But some of them did turn out pretty cute.

I will definitely be trying to make cake pops again, because they are so darn cute and there are so many things to make them into. I really hope that the phrase, "practice makes perfect," proves to be true when it comes to cake pops, because I don't know how many more times I can handle making them like I did tonight. I only used half of the cake/icing mix before I got tired of it. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow because I have some more bags of candy melts too.

Pumpkin Cake Pops
from Bakerella, written as I made them

Ingredients:
1 box of cake mix + ingredients from box to make 13x9 cake (I used white cake)
3/4 of a 16 oz. can of icing (I used vanilla)
2- 14 oz. bags of orange candy melts
~20 green Mike and Ike candies, cut in half
edible ink pen (black)
~40 lollipop sticks
styrofoam block

Make the cake using the directions on the box. Let cool completely. Working in large chunks, crumble cake into a large bowl. Mix in icing; stir until mixed well. Using a cookie dough scooper, scoop balls, then roll in hand until they are perfectly round. Place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Place in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Melt a few candy melts, stick about 1/2" of a lollipop stick into the chocolate, then push halfway into the cake ball. Continue with the rest of the cake balls. Stick back into the freezer for about an hour, or until they are pretty firm.

Melt about 1/2 a package of candy melts at a time (so it doesn't harden too quickly). Dip cake pops into the chocolate, then swirl/tap excess chocolate off. Before the chocolate dries, stick a Mike and Ike on the top. Stick into the styrofoam block and let chocolate dry completely. Draw on faces with edible markers.