Toy Story Alien Cake Pops

Ohhh, it's the claw!!!

  So a friend asked me to make her cake pops, for her son's birthday.  He wanted something toy story.  So off I went to the web to google and find something.  Everything I found was super cute.  I sent her a few pictures and hoped she would like the ideas.  I did not want to do anything too crazy because I knew I would screw it up.  Thankfully she liked the green aliens and I was happy.  I figured how hard could they be?  Well they were not too hard, just time consuming.  Darn it all!

 So to start I made a chocolate cake and once cooled crumbled it and mixed it with chocolate icing.  For cake balls I use cake mix and store frosting.  I really like the taste and it is much easier for me.  Plus, it's cheaper, and keeping costs down is a must.

So once the cake was all mixed up I used my truffle size ice cream scoop and scooped out all the mix into a parchment paper lined cake pan, and put them in the fridge. I did not roll or shape them yet.  Then I let them sit for a while so I could do some dishes or watch TV, I won't tell you which one, you can guess.

Okay they sort of look like a jelly bean shape, so that is what we will call it.

After about 40 minutes I took out the balls and rolled them into a sort of oval shape, nothing perfect, but not an egg and not a ball.  Does that make sense?  No? Well I have no idea what to tell you, I just sort of rolled with it.  Ha, rolled with it.  

Sorry...

Anyway I rolled out as many as I needed plus like 8 more just in case, then the rest were made into regular balls for my friends at work.  

I chilled them again while I melted white candy melts.  I added paraffin crystals and green candy colouring, from americolor.  I also had my Styrofoam blocks out and some lollipop sticks.

This is after the first dip, you can see the one on the left cracking already.

To start I dipped the sticks in the candy melts, then stuck them into the cake pop.  I worked about 5 at a time, letting the first one dry as I did the rest.  Then I dipped the whole thing in the melted candy melts and tapped off the extra.  I let them dry standing up in the Styrofoam blocks until they were all dipped.  I then let them set up to get back to room temperature and to allow for cracking.

Once they were up to room temperature I dipped them again, I find I have to tap the cake pop stick on the side of the bowl to get the candy melts to settle and not clump up.  Again I hate anything other than regular chocolate candy melts.

Then once they were all dry I got ready to decorate.  I had royal icing eye balls that I bought at the bakers ware house. ( I went to get more and they were only selling like 3000 now for like$30, so I just bought a few bags of royal icing mix for $2 each and am going to spend an afternoon making my own for way less. I will post about it if it works out.)

I can see!!!

I also had green candy covered sunflower seeds.  I got them in bulk at the bulk food store, but they were multi coloured so I had to pick them out.  I set those out with the eye balls, and got my food tweezers to get started.

Firstly I took a lollipop stick and dipped it into the candy melts and blobbed a line across the face of the alien to stick the eyes into.  I put the middle eye first then one on each side.  I did all the eyes then went back and put the sunflower seeds on.  This took forever.

Sunflower ear's and antenna.  The picture I found used licorice for the top antenna but it  would not work for me so I didn't even post it.

So I found the seeds were falling over before they would set, and sitting there holding them was not going to happen.  So I set up my fan and would dip a seed into the melts, set it on the cake pop then put it in front of the fan and sort of move it around until it set up enough to stay.  This took forever and I was not thrilled with how it looked, but you know nothing else worked.

They don't look too bad right?

Then I left them to dry for a while, I dipped the plain cake pops for my friends at work and cleaned up.

Lastly I took a black americolor food writer and drew on the smile.  I was really happy with the mouths and they looked sort of cute.  I also drew some faces on the ones for work, nothing fancy, they would eat anything made of cake.

With cake balls, you must take every opportunity to write "bad" things, because no one can be insulted with it is made out of sugar.

I let the drawn on mouths dry then wrapped them up and tied them with ribbon.  I left them at room temperature until they were picked up.  And apparently the birthday boy was very happy.  Which made me happy.

So there you go, how I totally made cake pops from a picture on the Internet.