Softball Cake Pops

I love making Cake Pops. They are so cute and delicious and actually pretty simple to make. When I first heard about Cake Pops, I immediately ordered Bakerella's Cake Pop Cookbook. She included tons of great ideas and I have had fun making some of her designs. So far I have made chicks, turkeys, snowmen, pirates, mini cupcakes, and now softballs!

M's softball team needed some inspiration (their record was 2-6 or something like that) so I decided to make them some softball cake pops!

My copy of Bakerella's book:

This is her page on sports balls cake balls. I wanted to make cake pops (cake balls on sticks) so I adjusted the recipe a little. Softballs are bright yellow with red laces so I bought yellow and red candy coating for this project. You will also need lollipop sticks, clear plastic bags, and ribbons. I found all of these items at local art supply stores.

First, I needed to make a cake. I used a white cake mix and added egg whites, vegetable oil, and water.

Once the batter was mixed, I poured it into one cake pan.

I baked the cake and let it cool completely.

The inside of a cake pop looks best if it is all the same color. Therefore, the darker edges of the cake need to be cut off. I used a bread knife to cut off all of the sides.

Then I crumbled the cake. I just used my hands, but you could also use a food processor. 

I used store bought vanilla frosting. (There are enough steps in this project without adding making cake and frosting from scratch!)

After stirring the frosting according to the directions on the can, I added half of it to the cake.

I mixed the frosting and the cake together.

The next step was the form the cake balls. I just use my hands to grab some mixture and roll it into about 1 inch balls. You could also use a melon baller or ice cream scoop to get more even amounts. I put them in glass containers and then let them sit in the freezer for about half an hour or in the refrigerator overnight to get harder. Don't leave them in the freezer too long because you don't want them to freeze!

When the cake balls were ready, I prepared a small amount of yellow candy coating. I filled a cup about halfway with the yellow candy coating and microwaved it according the directions on the package. 

This is what it looks like when it is completely melted and ready to use.

To get the lollipop sticks in the cake balls, dip a quarter to a half an inch of the stick in the candy coating and push it halfway into the cake ball. Put the cake balls with sticks back into the freezer or refrigerator to harden.

When the cake pops were ready, I melted a large amount of the yellow candy coating. I removed one container of cake pops from the refrigerator. I dipped the cake pops in the candy coating up to the lollipop stick.

You will have a lot of excess candy coating so you should twist the lollipop stick with one hand while tapping that hand's wrist with your other hand. This will cause most the excess to fall back into the glass and will smooth out any air bubbles or unevenly coated areas. If you tap the stick on the edge glass, then the ball may fall off!

 This is smoothed out cake pop.

I chose to decorate the yellow part of the softballs with two types of yellow sprinkles. While the candy coating on the cake pop was still wet, I poured both types of sprinkles on it.

The cake pops need to dry standing up to avoid smudging the candy coating and any decorations. I have found that the best holders are packages of toilet paper. I punched holes into the plastic covering a couple of inches apart in between the rolls with an extra lollipop stick. Its hard to see in the picture, but there are three vertical rolls so I made two columns. You can also use styrofoam blocks, but who has large blocks of styrofoam laying around?

After the cake pops were dry the next step was to add the red laces. I melted a small amount of red candy coating.

I used a toothpick to pick up globs of red candy coating and draw the red laces. After letting the cake pops dry again, I wrapped them in plastic bags and tied ribbons on them.

Here is a bag of softball cake pops ready for the tomorrow night's softball game! (Unfortunately that game was rained out and the next game was not for another week. I left the wrapped cake pops in the fridge and they tasted just as great a week later!)

After making enough softball cake pops for the entire team, I still had a dozen or so undecorated cake pops left over. It was getting late and adding the red laces on the softballs was tedious so I decided to melt some leftover white candy coating from a previous project and make popcorn cake pops. They don't exactly look like popcorn, but they were A LOT easier and faster to decorate. I held three toothpicks together and dipped them into the white candy coating and just dropped globs onto the cake pops.