So here are the cake pops - pardon the picture - I took it at night, and my kitchen is very yellow at night:
They turned out really cute although were a pain to make. I had never made cakepops before, so this was all an experiment. I followed the directions on the Wilton website. I had a few decide to come off of the stick and take a swim in the candy melts, which was frustrating. And getting the dots on the lady bugs was also a bit tricky. I decided to pipe the chocolate on the pops since I couldn't quite decide how i was going to get it on there, and so I was having trouble getting nice little dots - instead got nice little points. I called them dinosaur lady bugs.
Next came the cake. I first made baked the cake in a bowl and then put it in the freezer, which was mistake #1, because the cake came out a little rounded on top, so when I got it out and decided to cut that round part off, well - it was frozen and was tricky. Not to mention my recipe was flawed - the cake had good flavor, but was nearly cooked to smithereens by the time I got it done - so it was very dry and hard. Moving on. I decided to put a nice heavy layer of butter cream on the cake instead of just a crumb coat, for those who don't like the taste of fondant. That way they'd have some frosting there and could pick off the fondant.
After that it was just the red fondant to cover the cake, and rolling out dots, eyes, and head. I tried to make some curved antenna for it, but they broke when I tried to put them on the head, so I just colored a cakepop stick black and cut it in half, and stuck the black balls on the ends for antenna. I wanted something like grass to be at the bottom, but I ran out of powdered sugar, and my buttercream was a little loose - so that's what I ended up with. Overall I love the cake - even though it didn't taste the greatest!
The birthday was a success, all seemed to enjoy the cake, or well...were polite about it!
