I made chocolate cake (from a box) and used 2/3 of a can of chocolate frosting to make chocolate pops then coated them with a white or "vanilla" candy melt coating and red drizzles.
I started out by taking the cold cake and using my hands, broke it up until it was entirely in crumbs. You could use a food processor for this part, but hands were less to clean up. Be sure that there are no large clumps of cake or the balls won't form evenly (immature laugh).
Then add half the can of icing and use a spoon to mix it all together. It will start to stick together and depending on how moist your cake is, you may want to add more. You do not, however want it to become too sticky by adding too much icing because then it will be hard to work with.
Mine was almost forming a ball and was no longer in a crumbly form.
I then used a cookie scoop (1 1/2 Tbs) to measure out even sized balls, which I then split in half to that they were not too large for the pop sticks.
After they were split in half, I then used my hands to form the balls (about the size for two bites) and placed them back in the 13x9 pan that I baked the cake in. They almost all fit back in there (about four had to be stacked on top).
I placed them back in the fridge over night because I did not have time to make them at that time, however you would still need to chill them after handling because if they get too soft they are hard to dip.
The next step was to melt the candy following the directions on the package. The most helpful tip I have learned is to be sure not to over heat the candy or chocolate. If you do it will be too thick to dip anything. The trick is to heat it on low (I used the microwave, you could use a double broiler) for 30 seconds at a time. Once they start to melt, do not keep re-heating, just stir until they are all dissolved using the residual heat from the other chips. This will keep the chocolate from seizing.
So that the sticks would stay better, I dipped the end of each stick in the candy before placing it in the ball of cake. You can see my set-up below. I set a small crock pot to warm and heated the candy melts in the pot, then after they were melted I put them in the pot so it would maintain the right consistency.
These immediately went back to the fridge. I took out two or three at a time so that they were not too soft to dip and they wouldn't fall off the stick. I almost lost one, but was able to save it before it completely broke up in the candy melt, ruining it! Also, be sure to cover all of the cake or the oil from the cake will separate and leak out of the uncovered areas (not pretty).
Each stick was then set into a piece of Styrofoam so that they were upright. After the block was filled, they went into the fridge to harden.
I then drizzled red candy melt over the top. You can also dip in sprinkles or decorate with more elaborate designs.
The last piece of advice is that as you dip the cake, bits will come off and as you get to the end of the candy melt, it will become more "pure" (that may also be because I used white melt and chocolate cake). I only made it through half of the balls before I ran out of candy melt.
The girls on my team thought they were great and wanted to know where I got them... haha!
Let me know how it goes if you decide to give it a try!
