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I've tried to make cake pops a few times but they never came out as beautiful and tidy as the pictures I found on the web. I would love to try more and more to nail the goal but I think I must know some rules or what-to-do's to make progress. So please anyone who has the experience share the important points here, I really appreciate it. Please note that for me, the taste is as important as the look.

The following questions are what I'd like to know:

  • Does it matter what kind of cake you use, greasy or sponge or something else?
  • What about the icing? Here the question is, do I have to add less sugar in my cake batter to make it less sweeter so that I can use any kind of icing without worries?
  • Does it make a big difference what kind of lollipop stick?

I tried googling the subject "how to make cake pops" and read a few search results but most of them used special brands for different uses (e.g. candy melts) which are not available in my country.

Here is an example of some amazing cake pops:

enter image description here

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  • Hi Gigili, a question of the type "everything about "X" is way too broad. But your question body is OK, so I changed the title instead of closing.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Feb 7, 2015 at 20:22
  • @rumtscho: Thank you. There is still a tiny problem, as I said in the question body, it is not about look only, taste matters as much to me.
    – Gigili
    Feb 8, 2015 at 8:41

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There are two ways to get the shape. One way is to bake them spherical, the other to crumble the cake and to roll the crumples with icing.

To bake them spherical, you need a mold that goes into the oven, or an appliance for the task.

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Your basic cake recipes are what you want here, nothing fancy. White cake, yellow cake or chocolate cake, there's no reason to make it more complicated, considering that your presentation is going to be novel anyway.

A simple buttercream frosting would be fine for rolling the balls (if that's the way you choose to go), but you would want more of candy shell on the outside. Sure, Wilton brand candy melts are an option, but you might find almond bark easier to find. That comes in chocolate and white, and will set more like the candy melts, less soft and melty than real chocolate would be. White bark could be colored how ever you want (use gel coloring, not liquid). Here's an article you might find helpful about better choices than real chocolate for this kind of shell: Love from the Oven

The sweetness of your cake and icing is totally up to you. One thing to consider instead of reducing the sugar would be to possibly add a bitter element, like lemon zest.

The best thing you can use for the sticks, if you can find them. would be the plain paper ones:

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  • Hah, I thought those holes were for piping into, but I was wondering why they were so damn small.
    – Doug
    Feb 7, 2015 at 13:22
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    @Doug At first I thought steam release :) I'm adding a picture from Amazon that shows the holes in use.
    – Jolenealaska ♦
    Feb 7, 2015 at 13:26
  • But if there's no steam release, how does it become round? You'd risk an air pocket where the cake couldn't expand to (or the mold popping open from pressure). The only advantage might be how well the cake adheres to the stick by baking it in. (and I would assume you're baking below 425°F, so you're not going to run into issues w/ autoignition of the paper sticks.)
    – Joe
    Feb 7, 2015 at 13:51
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    If you're putting the sticks in afterwards, the holes just seem to be more trouble -- you'd have to then push the sticks out through the hole, unless you managed to find ones that were small enough to slip easily inside the hole -- but the odds of having them all perfectly centered & parallel to each other to lift off the mold cleanly seems quite improbable to me.
    – Joe
    Feb 7, 2015 at 15:30
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    To solve the riddle of the tiny holes: they are also there to test for doneness without openig the mold - at least that's what an advert I read today claims.
    – Stephie ♦
    Feb 18, 2015 at 12:06
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It's an enormous amount of work, but I made a batch a few years ago for a friend's daughter's wedding by mixing the cake and frosting and pressing it into two small cookie-cutters (one round and a slightly smaller fluted one), then pushed them out, stacked them to form a wedding cake shape, added the stick and then dipped them in candy melt and decorated them. The only problem I had was that the candy melt has a tendency to not be as thick at the edges, and would often crack as it hardened, so I had to dip many of them a second time. That probably isn't a problem with spherical pops. Still, they were a big hit.

Wedding Cake Pops

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