Soccer Birthday Party - Soccer Ball Cake Pops

Cake pops are all the rage these days, I'm sure you've seen them all over the place. Not to be left out, I had to give them a try. It also seemed pretty obvious that I should make cake pops for a soccer party seeing as they're ball shaped and all. I launched out with no intention of doing soccer balls though, that just seemed too difficult but then insanity took over in the 11th hour and I had to make them happen. Here's what I made the day before the party:

I made about 30 of these which was on top of the 60 or so ugly non-soccer ball cake pops I made before these. They still tasted great but these were the first ones served at the party.

Even though there are a million cake pop recipes out there, I'll share what I did here so if you want to try to make these soccer ball ones, you don't have to go looking elsewhere for the basic recipe.

Ingredients:

• Box of cake mix
• Cream cheese frosting (this is best so they don't get painfully sweet)
• Candy melts (sold at craft stores)
• Vegetable oil
• Sucker sticks

Bake the cake using the instructions provided on the box. Let it cool completely. Break it apart into a mixer bowl (you can do it all by hand but I had much better results when I busted out the KitchenAid). Mix the cake until it is just crumbs, the finer the better. 

Warm the cream cheese frosting so it is soft. Pour 3/4 of the container into the mixing bowl and combine the cake crumbs with the frosting. You're trying to achieve a play-doh like texture. Add more frosting if necessary. 

Line a large cookie sheet with wax or parchment paper. Using your hands, roll the frosting into balls however big you want them and place them on the lined cookie sheet. Mine were just over an inch in diameter which seemed to work pretty well. Smaller meant I'd have to roll out more balls, larger raised the risk they'd topple off the sticks. 

Once you've rolled out all the balls, put the cookie sheet in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. You want the balls to firm up but not to freeze solid. 

Melt the candy melts in the microwave using the instructions on the container. I also added a drizzle of vegetable oil to each batch to thin the candy out a bit. I highly recommend you do this. I think I probably added about a tsp, experiment with it to see what works best for you.

Take the balls out of the freezer. Dip a sucker stick in the melted candy and push it 3/4 of the way into each chilled cake ball. Once they're all in, put the cookie sheet back in the freezer for 5 minutes. 

Take the cake balls back out of the freezer again and begin dipping them in the melted candy. Dip one in, cover it completely then gently tap the stick on the side of the bowl while rotating the pop to get excess candy off. This is when you'll want to decorate the cake balls if you want to add soccer hexagons or sprinkles (see below for soccer hexagon tutorial) before the candy solidifies on the cake pop.

Stick the cake pop into styrofoam to dry upright. Once they're dry, they'll stay good for quite awhile even without refrigeration although I doubt you'll get to test this theory. 

Making soccer ball cake pop hexagon candys

You might wonder how I got all those little hexagons on my soccer balls. Well, it was thanks to a candy mold I found at Hobby Lobby. I loaded melted dark blue candy melts into a piping bag and squirted just a little into each compartment.

   

I put the mold into the freezer for a few minutes then popped them out and put them in a bowl to have handy for each cake pop.

As I mentioned before, I pressed these into the still-warm white candy coating on the cake pop before it solidified. I initially tried sticking them on after it had already cured using some melted candy as glue but it looked terrible (had to *make* the hubs eat that one).

In the end, and I was proud of myself for facing down the challenge and we had lots of happy kiddos devouring soccer balls.

   

Thank you for reading,
Julie