So back to the disaster, my girlfriend asked me to make Minnie Mouse cake pops for her daughter's birthday party. I told her I could make Minnie Mouse's head silhouette but I knew I couldn't make Minnie's face. She said she knew they would turn out great and that would be fine. (NO Pressure for me!)
I set to work Weds night with an image in my head. I made the cake mix and cooked it in my Pampered Chef cake pan (I think that may have been my first mistake.)I love that pan but I think it kept my cake way too moist. I always seem to have trouble with chocolate cake pops (as opposed to vanilla or any other cake mix flavor for that matter.)
When I went to mash up half of the cake it was just way too soft. I added a little frosting to make the cake "batter" to roll the balls out but the consistency just wasn't right. I don't know how to explain it other than it didn't feel right in my hand. I added basically the other half of the cake and it was still way too moist. But what was I to do? I started rolling the balls out and sticking them on the sticks. They had a bunch of cracks so I tried to salvage them by filling them with chocolate to "glue" it back together. I thought I would use mini-Oreos for the ears. Well, that made them way too top heavy and after dipping the first 3 just for them to fall apart in the melting chocolate, I knew I needed a Plan B. I looked in my pantry and the only thing I had that was "ear shape" was Cheerios. (Mistake #2) I dipped them and they just looked wrong. I also used Milk Chocolate to dip but it was too brown. Here is a picture of the lumpy "silhouette"
So I went to bed after midnight heartbroken. It was a disaster and a failure. I couldn't do anything except tell her I bombed them but that I knew what I could do to fix them. (She was very understanding.)
So Thursday after work I rushed into the cake supply store by my house. (I say rush because they close at 6 and I got there at like 5:50.) I raced around the store and picked up some dark milk chocolate, some medium size confetti disc's and some M & M's. I had to nail the ears that night or there was no way. The super nice man also told me that he had black chocolate. (I didn't notice it in my mad rush) He wished me luck and I raced off to go pick up my babies from Daycare.
We got home, got everyone situated and I started on a new cake. The only cake pan I have is my Pampered Chef one so I decided to cook it 5 mins longer than recommended. I knew it would be moist once I added the frosting anyways. I also noticed that the cake mix I bought said it had 1 cup of pudding in the mix.
Mystery solved! Between my awesome cake pan and the pudding, I think that has to be why my cake was so moist. Fantastic, if you're going to EAT the cake but not so much for Cake Pops. (It's on my To-Do list to buy a chocolate cake mix without the added pudding to see if they still crack. Or maybe it's me and I just suck with chocolate cake. I'll let you know.)
So I took the cake out, put the babies to bed and started the process again. I had a little bit of cake crumb left from the night before on reserve in case I needed it with this one. It helped to cook it slightly longer and have the cake crumb on hand too. I got the "batter" to feel right and set to work.
I used the confetti discs for the ears. (The M & M's worked too but I thought the shape was better using the confetti disc's)
I wanted Minnie's bows to be large so I took a Ziploc bag and cut a tiny hole. I piped about 65 bows in order to get the 24 I needed. They all were about the same size and shape.
Here is the final result. I'm really glad with how they turned out. It matched the idea I had in my head and she was pleased with them as well.
They look really great! I'll have to hire you for Anthonys first party. Granted thats 11months away ;)
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