If you haven’t jumped on the cake pop bandwagon just yet, one taste of Lauren Martin’s dense, flavorful treats will make you a convert in no time. Lauren is the founder of Sweet Lauren Cakes, the artisan bakery behind our festive Halloween cake pops. Since the pops are as beautifully hand-decorated as they are delicious, we asked Lauren to show us how she brings each one to life — from mummies and pumpkins to black cats — step by step.
Roll the cake into balls. Start with a fully baked cake in a baking sheet — use your favorite flavorful cake recipe. (Most of the flavor in this small bite comes from the cake, not the chocolate on the outside, so go for intensity.) Grind the cake into crumbles in a food processor, then add a dollop of cream cheese frosting to hold the crumbs together. Roll the crumbs into balls with your hands — a 9-inch cake makes about 40 balls.
Mold the balls into shapes. Use your fingers to shape the balls into the foundation of the cake pop characters — in this case, pumpkins, mummies and black cats. You can create the ridges of the pumpkins with your fingertips, then smush the top and bottom. The mummies are egg-shaped, with a slight point at one end. For the cats, form an oval shape and flatten a bit.
Melt the chocolate and insert sticks. Microwave white chocolate chips in 20-second increments, stirring in between each. Heat until the chocolate is completely melted and thin, then stir in coloring if using for pumpkins and cats. Lauren uses a candy colorant, which you can find at baking supply stores (regular food coloring will ruin the chocolate).
Dip sticks about 1 inch deep into the melted chocolate, then insert into the cake and lay on a baking sheet to harden before coating. Here’s how Lauren creates each of the unique cake pops in our Halloween collection (plus a surprise exclusive design for our blog readers!):
Pour melted white chocolate into a plastic bag and cut a tiny hole in the tip. Pipe thin lines onto the mummy in opposite directions, so it looks like he’s wrapped up. Flip and pipe the same pattern on the other side. Make two big circles for his eyeballs, then finish piping his eyes and eyebrows in black (to make a black color, melt dark chocolate chips and mix in black candy colorant).
Pour melted green chocolate into a plastic bag and cut a tiny hole in the tip. Pipe a curly stalk on top, then pipe vines and leaves coming out of the center. Be creative — each one of these is a little different.
Black Cats: Dip the bases of two miniature white chocolate chips in black melted chocolate, then stick on top of the shaped cake to form the cat’s ears. Dip in black melted chocolate, swirl, and tap the stick to remove any excess chocolate. Place in a regular glass, standing up, to harden.
When the chocolate is hard, lay the cake pops down flat. Use more melted chocolate to stick egg-shaped yellow candies onto the cat for eyes. Stick a heart-shaped candy below the eyes, pour melted red chocolate and melted gray chocolate into separate plastic bags, and cut a tiny hole in each tip. Pipe the mouth in red and whiskers in gray. Use a black edible marker to draw pupils on the cat eyes (again, you can find these in specialty baking supply stores).
To pull them off, first shape the cake into a cone, then dip in melted white chocolate. Swirl, tap to remove the excess chocolate, then stand upright in a glass to let the first layer harden. Once hard, dip three-quarters into melted orange chocolate, swirl and tap. Stand upright in a glass to harden again, then dip the top third into yellow melted chocolate.
Image Credit: Alison Christiana