Cake Pops Decorating Class - Pigs, Sheep and Cows

I've tried to make cake pops a couple of times and it has always been a disaster - mainly because I can't get the balls to stay on the sticks! I decided it was about time I took a class to learn how to do it properly and for my birthday received a voucher for a lesson at the Make Lounge. I've been there a couple of times before, to do a sewing class and a paper cutting class, and really enjoyed them both.

When I arrived at the Make Lounge and met the friendly tutor Rachel, I saw we had already been provided with cake pops that had already been dipped in white candy melts. (Candy melts are coloured discs you melt for making sweets or dipping cake pops and they come in all sorts of different colours). That did actually make sense, because the cake pops need to go in the freezer or fridge overnight to set, but it was a bit disappointing as it meant I still wasn't going to be able to learn how to make the balls stay on the sticks!

Rachel did give me plenty of advice about how to do it correctly, and I think I may have identified where I was going wrong. But I would have liked it if we had been able to make some cake balls ourselves - even if we then had to use the ones Rachel had prepared in class - to see what sort of consistency they were supposed to be. So in the end this class was actually all about decorating cake pops rather than making them, which was a shame, but in retrospect I shouldn't really have expected to make them because they do need to go in the fridge for quite a long time and it was only a two and a half hour class.

Here are some of the most important tips I noted down during the class.

How to make cake pops

• Bake or buy a cake and break it up into crumbs. Mix with buttercream - you need an 80/20 ratio of cake to buttercream and you should knead it to a dough-like consistency.
• Cake that is a day or two old works best for this.
• Your balls should be about 30g in weight, so they are not too heavy for the sticks
• Roll the mixture into balls, place on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and place in the fridge for at least two hours or overnight, or in the freezer for 20 minutes.
• Don't pack the cake mixture too tightly when you make the balls; they will contract when they freeze and could crack.
• When you are ready to use the balls, only take a couple out of the fridge at a time so they don't get too warm. But if you have put them in the freezer, you need to bring them back to fridge or cool room temperature, otherwise the cold cake pop meeting the hot candy melt can cause problems.
• Melt the candy melts in the microwave or a bain marie. You need a deep bowl, so if you are not using much, a mug is a good idea. You need to be able to plunge the whole cake pop into the candy melts in one go to coat it.
• The candy melts need to be a pouring consistency so you may need to add a little vegetable oil to thin the mixture. You don't need much though - 1-2 tbsp oil is enough for a whole packet of candy melts.
• Dip the end of the stick in a little candy melt and insert into a cake ball. You don't need to put it back into the fridge again to set.
• Dip the cake pop in the candy melt and coat it all in one go. If you have to keep dipping because you haven't covered the bottom, the cake pop is more likely to fall off the stick.
• Hold the cake pop at a 45 degree angle and tap gently against the edge of the bowl so the excess candy drips off.
• Then stand upright in a polystyrene cake dummy that you have made holes in (you can also buy special cake pops stands which you can also use to display the cake pops).

We began by decorating a cake pop in a simple style, first dipping it completely in a coloured candy melt and then half dipping it in a bowl of sprinkles.

If the candy melts are the right consistency and you dip the cake pop once, you get an even, glossy coating. Here you can see the cake pop being held at an angle to allow the excess to run off.

I dipped the cake pop half way down into the bowl of sprinkles and had my first completed cake pop.

Next we tried a marbling technique. We dipped the cake pop into one colour - I chose yellow - then took a spoonful of another colour and drizzled it over the top, turning the cake pop as we did so. I ended up with a really nice pattern that reminded me a bit of a Chupa Chups lolly.

You can also use fondant shapes to decorate your cake pops; just make sure the candy melt coating has dried as otherwise the fondant shapes will slip off. You can either wait until the candy melt coating is still tacky, or if it has completely dried, use a cocktail stick to put a little wet candy melt onto the spot where you want to attach the fondant shape.

Rachel had a selection of plunger cutters for us to use; I chose a large and a small star shape. Cut the shapes out of fondant...

... and simply stick them on to the cake pop. I've finished this one with a sprinkling of glitter.

My favourite cake pops are the ones that look like animals so I was pleased when Rachel told us we would learn how to make a pig and a sheep. To make the pig, we first dipped the cake pop into a bowl of pink candy melts.

Then I made the nose and ears from pink fondant. It was very easy - just two triangles for the ears which I then shaped and bent slightly, and a small ball for the snout, which I then flattened and used a cocktail stick to make nostrils.

The eyes were a little more tricky as they were so small. I placed a small circle of white fondant onto the face then two even smaller circles of black fondant on top (attaching the latter with a cocktail stick dipped in some more candy melt). It may be easier to use an edible pen if you have one for the eyes. I really like this little pig!

I also had a go at making a tail, by rolling out a thin sausage shape from the pink fondant and curling it around a cocktail stick.

I then slid it off the stick and attached it to the back of the pig with some candy melt. However it started to unroll, and in any case my cake pop was only the pig's head, not the whole body, so it shouldn't really have had a tail coming out the back!

I really like this red apple and again it was very simple to make. I dipped a cake pop in red candy melt, made a leaf and a stalk from fondant and used the side of a cocktail stick to make the veins on the leaf. The cake pop was finished with a sprinkling of red glitter.

Can you tell what this one is going to be...? We had one cake pop which was more of an oval shape - because of course they don't have to be perfectly round balls. We dipped it in white candy melt and covered it with tiny white sprinkles. It's meant to look like wool...

I made the sheep's face and feet out of black fondant and attached them using some more candy melt

Here's a side view of the sheep, isn't he cute?

For our last cake pop we were allowed to freestyle and decorate it however we wanted, so of course I had to make a cow. (You may remember I have a bit of a cow theme going in my life). This isn't perfect as I was making it up as I went along, and not even looking at a picture - I don't think the nose is quite right, and the shape of the ears and the black spots reminds me more of a giraffe! Still, I think it's obvious this is a cow; a female cow in fact as I added a little flower in her hair.

Here are all the cake pops I made during the course. I had a lot of fun and was impressed by the tutor Rachel.

We also packaged up our cake pops to take home, putting a cellophane bag over the top and gathering it with a ribbon. They were very easy to transport like this - I laid them end to end in a paper bag, and they all made it home (on public transport via a detour to the shops) in perfect condition.

Two more cake pops packaged up and waiting to go home. I've got so many ideas now for other animals I want to make - now I've learnt the basic principles I'm sure I could do pretty much anything. As long as I can get the balls to stay on the sticks!

Baby shower cake for my boss

So I promised a while ok (Ok, quite a while ago) that I would show you what I did with this fondant sheep... it found its way onto a baby shower cake for my boss!

My boss and his wife are both American, and actually met while they were working at our company's head office in the US. After they got married, he got a promotion and they came to London. Now, baby showers are a big deal in America - some people set up gift lists as we do here with weddings, and the mother-to-be's friends have a big party and play games like tasting baby food and quizzing the parents-to-be about baby-related facts. So I gather from the internet, anyway - I've never been to a baby shower before! They haven't taken off in the UK at all and while I do think it would be nice to celebrate an impending birth (and be pretty handy to get a whole bunch of things you need for the baby), some friends I've spoken to say they find it really mercenary and would never dream of registering with Toys R Us in the same way that they registered with John Lewis when they got married. But I guess if it's generally accepted and what everyone else is doing...!

Anyway, since the folks in our US head office knew both my boss and his wife, they wanted to throw them a baby shower that they could also be part of, so we set up a fake meeting invite for my boss, invited his wife into the office, and set up a video conference link between the two locations. We decorated the rooms and the US team said they would order a cake - and I volunteered to make one.

And where does the sheep come into play? Well, my company's logo is a kind of sheep - it looks nothing like the one I made out of fondant but I think mine is a much cuter, nursery character-style version. And to be honest, I was going to make a teddy bear but ran out of time and had already made this sheep in the cake decorating class!

I decided to make a simple victoria sponge and followed a Mary Berry recipe that I found on the internet. I also made good use of my new Kitchenaid that I had got only a few weeks before!

Beating the eggs

Adding butter, sugar and flour

Mix it all up - I sometimes find I need to use this protector if there's a lot of flour, otherwise it goes everywhere!

Tasting the batter - chef's perks!

I love the fact that the Kitchenaid bowl has a handle, so it's really easy to hold and scrape out the mixture with a spatula

In the oven waiting to be baked

Now for the tricky part... rolling out the white fondant.

As well as registering at three different places for baby gifts, my boss's wife told me they had also chosen the colours lavender and mint green for their new daughter. I thought that was really nice and a good way of making sure they didn't receive an ocean of pink!

I wanted to make the cake reflect those colours but not make it too bright and gaudy, so I decided to leave the cake itself white, but coloured a small amount of fondant with lavender and a small amount with green. If you're using a gel paste colour, you just need to dot on a few blobs with the end of a cocktail stick, and knead the fondant well until the colour is evenly distributed.

I used the Tappit alphabet set to cut out some letters

I moulded some of the coloured fondant into cubes and stuck a letter on top. It's supposed to look like the alphabet building blocks that children have.

The cake, when it had come out of the oven

I sandwiched the two cakes together with buttercream and spread a thin layer of buttercream over the top and around the sides

Then I covered it with the rolled-out fondant icing. This is pretty neat, for me!

Smoothing down the sides

I wanted something to decorate the sides of the cake so it didn't look too plain. I had some baby-themed cookie cutters, which were quite small, so I used them to cut out shapes of the coloured fondant: a rocking horse, a baby's bottle and a teddy bear.

I used a small amount of water to stick them around the side of the cake

And here's the sheep I made a while back in an edible modelling class. I'd been wondering what to do with him...

I think he looks quite cute sitting on top of the cake!

Finally I added the alphabet blocks, which spell 'baby'

My boss and his wife really liked the cake and I was very pleased it turned out well :-)

 

I'm updating this post to send this celebration cake to Tea Time Treats, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked.  Tea Time Treats was one year old in November so their theme for this month is celebration cakes.. and what better thing to celebrate than a new baby?

How to make a fondant sheep

Isn't he cute?

I recently took a class to learn how to make some animals from fondant for decorating cakes. It's actually pretty straightforward once you know how!

The main thing you need to know is that all animals/people models are made from three basic shapes - the cone, the ball and the sausage. Once you've made these three basic shapes, you can build up pretty much anything. If you look at the picture above, you can probably break it down in your mind and work out which piece is which shape. Once you bear in mind that the sheep is made out of several pieces, it looks a lot more manageable!

We actually used regular fondant for these animals - I was a little surprised we weren't using Mexican paste or modelling paste but it seemed to work out OK (though several weeks on, the odd tail/ leg did fall off my creations!)

We began by making a cone from white fondant and several little balls - too many to count! Then we made sausage shapes from brown fondant which would form the arms and legs. See, it's easy!

Stick the body cone onto two of the legs and flatten the legs slightly so it sits straight

We used this modelling tool- I don't know what it's called - to make an indentation on the feet. They do look like sheep hooves, don't they?
I also stuck on the arms

Next take all the little white balls and use a dab of water on a paintbrush to stick them all over the sheep's body. It would never have occured to me to make the sheep's wool this way, but I think it looks really good!

I made another brown cone and flattened it slightly in the middle to form the head.Break a cocktail stick in half and use it to secure the head onto the body. Continue covering with 'wool'.

I used another modelling tool with a curved edge to make an indentation for a smile, and also poked small holes for eyes. The ears were small balls of brown fondant flattened then stuck on with a dab of water. I think he looks like a proper sheep, and pretty cute too! Stay tuned for a forthcoming post to see the cake I used this on.....