I see a lot of people asking questions about cake pops/balls, So I thought I'd share some tips I've picked up over the couple years I have been making them 
* cracking:
I notice whenever I freeze my cake pops they end up cracking. Some people here say they freeze them without a problem, but not me. When I roll out my cake balls, I put them in the fridge for a few hours. Some still crack but the majority are ok.
When attaching a fondant figurine or deco to your cake pop, avoid the urdge to dip and stick the deco on the wet pop. Although it seems faster, they cake pop usually cracks for some reason when done this way. Take a bit of melted chocolate with a toothpick, and apply some melted chocolate to the figurine. hold in place til it sets.
After melting your chocoate/wafers, let it cool for a while. Not until hard but just not hot..warm. If the chocolate is too hot this also factors in a crack.
If you do get a small crack you can try to hide it by putting a deco on it, or even piping some chocolate scrollwork over the crackline. Or you can always redip.
*melting the chocolate/wafers:
lots of people use the microwave but I prefer the old double boiler. for my own reasons. melt your chocolate/melts along with a tablespoon of shortening. give it a good stir every now and then as its melting to get rid of any clumps. Sometimes I take out a wisk and just wisk th e chocolate and the lumps disappear.
Once its melted and smooth, let it sit for about 10 minutes until its cooled down a bit but not solidified.
If youre going to color the chocolate, add the food coloring towards the begininning of the melting process.
*dipping:
If Im making cake pops, I dip the stick (without the ball on it) in the melted chocolate about 1 cm deep, then stab into the cake ball, dont go all the way through, just about half way. This keeps your cake ball from falling off the stick. If I'm making cake balls, after I roll them I stick a toothpick into each one, and dip them holding the toothpick.
Dip your cake pop into the melted chocolate in one swift motion. Tap off the access chocolate by tapping the stick on the side of the pot, or just tapping your wrist with your other hand. Once the extra chocolate has fallen back into the pot, stick your cake pop into a piece of foam to let it dry. If you dont have foam, Ive placed them in mugs in the past and they were an ok substitute.
To dip a cake ball, use the same technique but hold the toothpick rather than the stick. Dip it then either place in foam, or on a wax lined tray. If you want to make the extra effort, I have purchased a binch of those cooling packs (with the blue gel for headaches) I put the frozen packs underneath my wax paper lined tray, so that the tray is cold. That way when I lay my cake ball on it, I dont get that puddle at the bottom and my ball is perfectly round.
When making a large amount of cake pops, invest in a chocolate melter (kind of like a fondue pot). That way, you can put a good movie on tv, take your melter into the living room, and just dip as youre sitting and watching tv lol. sounds silly but makes the time go faster.
*storage:
cake pops can last a good 5 days in a cool room on the countertop, or a good 3 weeks in the fridge in an airtight container. They still taste very fresh even 3 weeks after making them.
Hope I helped someone out there!
Im kinda sleepy right now but if I remember anything else later I'll add it!
awesome! Thanks for all the tips! I have SUCH a hard time with cracking though. I've tried freezing them, refrigerating them...hot melted chocolate, warm melted chocolate....I'm thinking it may actually have something to do with how tightly I roll my cake into balls....
Wow, great tips, thanks. I was going to make some this weekend. I'm going to try the ones from the babycakes maker but I would bet all these tips are the same for that kind too.
great tips! thanks! just curious, is there a way to save forum posts so I can come back to them?
great tips! thanks! just curious, is there a way to save forum posts so I can come back to them?
I don't think so. Besides, the CC site goes crazy a lot. All of a sudden you would stop receiving confirmation emails that there's new info on the threads.
What I do is I copy the link to a Word document (I also have a database) or Excel document, and put a description on it. Whenever you want to, you just click on that link and it will connect you to the internet, to the specific thread.
I also save PDFs of the threads so that I can have the info offline.
Or, at the very least, you can bookmark the link on your browser.
just curious, is there a way to save forum posts so I can come back to them?[/quote]
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are asking for, but when I see a forum post that I know I'll come back to, I hit the link at the bottom of the page that says "watch topic for replies". This then can be found again when you click under forums and just underneath the main tabs (home, recipes, forums, articles, etc) there is a button that says 'watched topics". it will then be in there. HTH!
What is the average price for a cake pop? I need to check, but I thought Starbuck's was selling them for 1.50 each undecorated. Does that ring true in other parts of the country? How about the decorated pops? I would think they would be time consuming.
-Debbie B.
Have you searched "how about a serious thread on cake balls" ? over 8 pages of tips and flavours
wow, for some reason cc never notified my of these replies, sorry!
splymale, I usually use doctored cake mixes for my cake pops, and 1 box gets me around 40-45 cake balls that are around walnut size. Oreo pops are my best selling flavor, and 1 standerd box or oreo's also makes me around the same amount. Hope I helped.
2 cups of BC sounds like a lot to me for that amount of cake. What you want to do is crumble your cake and mix it with just enough BC (or anything!!) to make it into a "dough" consistency. I think 1/4 cup would be enough? you dont want it mushy...just moist enough where you can roll it into a ball.
When I say "anything", you dont have to use buttercream! with my carrot cake balls I use plain old cream cheese. (some think when i use BC or frosting as a binder the balls are too sweet.) Actually I dont use BC in any of my cake balls. (thats just me.)
dukes...yes the cracking is a pain ughhh. I only recently started refridgerating them for several hours (not to just get them cold but to dry out a bit as well) and using melted chocolate that is warm to the touch.(meaning you can touch it and keep touching it without feeling any pain from the heat, just nice and warm). That's reduced my cracking significantly.
Deb, I'm not in the US but I sell my pops for about $2.00-$.3.00 each for custom designs. I even charge a little more for the extremely time consuming designs. and my "naughty" designs are the most highly priced. My standard cake pops that are just simple stripes I charge 1.00 a pop. I also have a minimum of 1 dozen and limiting flavor selections by the dozen. (ie, 2 dozen pops, 2 flavors.) I also have a packaging fee for large orders. (wrapping a dozen pops and tying them with a bow is fine, but do 300 of them and your hands fall off.)
Here are some of the flavors I make and sell:
Oreo balls binded with cream cheese (best seller)
Cheesecake balls (just cheesecake rolled into balls.) *you can improvise with this: add cherry pie filling, add crushed oreos, add lemon extract, and chocolate powder, add coffee flavor, for so many different variations!)
Carrot cake and cream cheese
chocolate cake with nutella as a binder
chocolate cake with peanut butter as a binder
brownie balls (so moist you dont need a binder)
those are just some! and with extracts you can add even more possibilities. your binder doesnt have to be BC.
MzCuteCupcakes, see how Cakes-and-bakes was not notified of the new posts?
That's the reason why you should mark your favorite threads somewhere else, on your browser, copy it to Word, etc.
You can't rely on the "Watch topics for replies" button anymore. It happens very frequently that if you don't come back on your own, you'll never know what happened.
True!!!
Sometimes I just "create shortcut" to the page too if i want to come back to it and see if there are any "new" posts as well.
Thanks for the wonderful info, cakes-and-bakes!
By the way, when I want to save a link for future reference, I put it in the "Favorites" list at the top left of the screen. This is a Windows thing, not part of CakeCentral. When you're in the thread, just click on Favorites and when it opens click on the Add to Favorites (or whatever it says - my operating system is in Spanish!) and the link will appear in your list.
Thanks for all the tips! I have a question about the Merken's chocolate coating, it seems that I have to dip the cake pops twice for this because the underlying cake show through so much and even if I had the cake pops in the fridge for 30 minutes, the chocolate still cracks! And yes, I wait till it cools down a bit. Does anyone have any tips to keep this from happening? I just switched to Merckens and now i'm kind of regretting it.
I use Merckens also and I find that if I don't let the cake balls return to nearly room temp I get cracking too.
Actually, ive never tried any other brand!! I hope its not just merckens cos I just ordered a whole new shipment of them today! Any brand you reccomend I try for my next shipment?
I have noticed that too particularly when I use a dark cake and a light coating. I found that if I takemy chocolate off the heat and let it start to thicken up (just a bit) the pops become opaque.
You really have me interested in trying other brands now!
And youre welcome everyone!!! my pleasure!
I actually discovered a great dipping tool today - I hadn't put/thrown away the easter egg kits and found that the wire 'egg dipper' was absolutely perfect for dipping cake balls in chocolate! They're kind of flimsy so you can make them bigger and smaller as needed. I'm planning to search for after-Easter sales and stock up!
Also, I used Merckens today and it was the first time I didn't have any cracking/leaking. I didn't put them in the freezer this time, wondering if that was it. I just put them in the fridge for a couple hours instead. Overall a good day for cake balls!
You might be able to use the dipping swirly tool that pastry chefs use when working with chocolate.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000E2OF1/?tag=cakecentral-20
I find that if I take my frozen balls/pops out of the freezer and let them stand for about half an hour, the cracking goes way down. I might just try putting them in the fridge next time instead of freezing them to see what happens. One thing that helps me a lot is to put a tablespoon or two of shortening in every pound of chocolate before you melt it - it gives the shell a sort of crunch and helps to hold it all together. I've never used Mercken's because I don't know where to get it here in Mexico (if somebody has a suggestion, I'm all ears).
great tips! thanks! just curious, is there a way to save forum posts so I can come back to them?
It's true that the preferences you've selected under "profile" often reset themselves so you might not get the "watched topic" email notifications.
But if you have selected a thread to "watch" it goes into your "watched topics" folder and is always available for you to check on (without having to search for the thread so this is a method of saving the topic for future reference).
I have several pages of "watched" topics that I've saved to use for future reference when replying to posts asking the same questions.
HTH
You know now that I think about it, it might not be the merckens when it comes to cracking cos Ive also dipped into white chocolate and both milk and dark chocolates and still got cracking. hmm. I also recently dipped some white cake balls (using white chocolate, not candy melts) and they still had that see-through thing going on.
I have to make some hello kitty cake pops today and those are white, thank god she picked vanilla cake filling!
If you aren't being notified of new posts via email when you have clicked on "Watch this Topic," you might check your junk mail folder. This was the first time I had marked that I wanted to watch this topic, and I found it in my junk mail instead of my inbox..
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