Cake pops are a recent baking trend – I’m sure you’ve all seen the myriad of cake pop books and ideas on the market. I’ve never really tried to make them myself, until yesterday. Yeah, I’m always a bit late for everything.
These Lego cake pops are the kind of thing that happens when your husband works all day on a rainy Saturday. We were heading to a birthday celebration for two of our good friends who are amongst a group of serious lego fans. I thought these would be a nice little way to say ‘Happy Birthday’.
They were also just a lot of fun to make.
Now that I’ve made them once, I’m sure there will be more cake balls in my future. I expect I’ll be able to keep improving on them, having learned so much the first time that will help me perfect them more and more each time I try.
Here are the things you’ll need to make cake pops. Not pictured are the add-ins required to finish the cake mix, like eggs and oil. Also not pictured are the additional things you’ll want for decorating – I put them on lollipop sticks, then used an icing bag and a couple of different tips for decorating their little faces.
I’m skipping the part where I bake the cake mix. I’m sure we’ve all baked a cake mix. If you haven’t, do it today and call it your first baking success. Take a picture and send it to me. If any of you out there take pictures of your kitchen successes, please send them to me – I’d love to see them. I’ll post them too, if you’d like.
Crumble your baked cake mix.
Add a standard sized container of frosting and until completely incorporated. The container should be about 350 grams. That’s the ratio of frosting to cake needed for cake pops. Easy peasy.
I divided the entire recipe using an ice cream scoop. I did this because I really wanted to have cake pops of uniform size.
Once I had the mix scooped (I got 16 equal scoops), I divided each scoop into two equal parts and started to form my cake pops. The next time I make these, I will probably divide each scoop into four equal parts. I thought the cake pops I made were just a bit too big. I think they should really only be about a mouthful, and these were definitely at least two mouthfuls.
Once the cylindrical lego heads were formed, I stuck a stick in them. To ensure the stick would come out of the cake pops easily, I filled each hole for the stick with a bit of melted confectionary chocolate. This is the same stuff I melted to coat them with.
Let the cake pops chill for a while now. I let them chill for close to an hour. This helps them set a bit before we start to coat them in chocolate.
Once they have set, stand them up. You’re going to want to have something to keep them standing on their sticks. I used a cardboard box with a layer of styrofoam in the bottom. I poked holes in the foam to hold the sticks in place. While they were standing, I stuck a candy on the top of each cylinder with melted chocolate coating. This would become the top of the lego head.
Melt the chocolate wafers in a double boiler. You can also use the microwave for this. I chose not to microwave because I wanted to keep them melted consistently since I knew it would take a while to coat all of the cake balls. Once the chocolate starts to cool down, it becomes a bit more difficult to use.
It’s time to dip. Muster up all of the patience you can – this step takes a while. I double coated these ones.
Allow the chocolate to set. Once it is completely set, you can start the detail work.
Faces. Lots of lego faces.
An army of lego faces.
As with any other recipe, make cake pops however you’d like and let your imagination run wild. Make snowmen in the winter and wrap them in a licorice lace scarf. Put a white fondant sheet over them to make them into ghosts for Halloween.
No matter how you decorate cake balls, rest assured they’re certainly happy-making.
