Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops {Making Lemonade}

Hello, CSI friends!  I’m thrilled to be stopping over from my blog, Making Lemonade, with a fall themed food recipe.  Incidentally, don’t let the name of my blog fool you– it isn’t about that delicious summer beverage we all know and love.  It’s about learning to live a lovely life, for less– which we had to do after my daughter’s traumatic entry into the world.  {she’s doing great now, by the way!} 

That means I’ve been blogging my way through as many DIY projects, recipes, and inadvertent Mommy Misadventures as I can manage with two little ones less than 2 years apart.  Most recently I’ve started a weekly Refresh Your Nest Friday link party, which of course I hope you’ll join! Last month, I was looking through a magazine that featured cake pops on the cover.  "What are THOSE?" my husband asked.  I explained about the whole cake pop trend and how I’d never made them before.  That’s when he got a big smile on his face and mentioned they’d taste amazing if they were pumpkin flavored.

Ding ding!  We had a winner.  Now I had to come up with a pumpkin spice cake pop recipe– without ever having made cake pops before.  Or, dare I admit, never having tasted cake pops before?  Don’t fear, I took the basic directions from the magazine and gave them a seasonal spin.  Which is a big step for me, because I almost never mess with recipes that involve baking.  My inner Martha yells that measurements need to be exact and to follow directions to the letter.  Take THIS, inner Martha… my very own pumpkin spice cake pop recipe, which received the hubby {and daughter’s} seal of approval! Ingredients:

• 1 box spice cake mix (or pumpkin cake, or cake-made-from-scratch, whatever works for you)
• 1 1/2 c. ready made cream cheese flavored frosting
• 1/2 c. pumpkin puree
• lollipop sticks (I used a 6" size because I covered the pops with bags and ribbon for a bake sale)
• candy melts (I used Wilton’s Candy Melts in dark chocolate)
• sprinkles, nonpareils, chopped nuts, mini-marshmallows… whatever you’d like for toppings

1.  First, bake the cake according to the directions and let cool. 2.  In a large bowl use either your hands or a food processor to pulverize the cake into uniform sized crumbs. Ignore that light colored spot in the photo, that’s the sun in a rare shining moment here in Pennsylvania this month.  Not that I’m bitter about the recent weather or anything. 3.  In a small bowl, mix up 1 1/2 cups frosting with 1/2 cup pumpkin puree (can adjust to your personal pumpkin taste level here, just aim for about 2 cups of the ratio of frosting to pumpkin that you like best). 4.  Combine the frosting mix with cake crumbs in large bowl to form a "dough."  Using your hands, form 1" sized balls.  The balls should stick together and not have cracks, if it’s too dry use more frosting.  Place balls on cookie sheet lined with wax paper. 5.  Freeze for 20 minutes.  Watch for sneaky husbands stealing one or two during this time.  I actually froze mine for several days because I wanted to use them for a bake sale the following weekend. 6.  When ready, melt some chocolate according to the package directions.  Place one end of lollipop stick into the melted chocolate and then insert into the cake ball.  This helps keep them on the stick.  Do this with all the cake balls, and freeze for 20 more minutes. 7.  If you don’t have a "drying spot" ready, now is a good time to make one.  I used a piece of craft foam with holes pre-made by pushing a lollipop stick into the foam.  This made it easier to put them in without having to put pressure on the cake ball.  I also used a shoe box with holes in the top for the extras. 8.  When ready, melt additional chocolate according to the package directions.  Dip cake balls into the melted chocolate and immediately into the sprinkles.  I used fall colored nonpareils and teeny ghost sprinkles.  You could also use orange melting chocolate and make them look like pumpkins! 9.  As you finish each one, gently place in drying rack. 10.  Since I was donating these to a bake sale, I bagged them in foldable ziploc bags.  {the plastic lollipop bags I purchased were too small so I used what I had on hand.}  Then I finished them off with a ribbon and tag on the box describing what they were. By the way, this recipe yields A LOT of cake pops.  Way more than shown in this photo, and there are over a dozen hiding in this picture.  I plead the 5th about where the extras might have ended up.  {brushes crumbs off keyboard}  Just kidding, we took most of the extras along with us.  MOST. Ahem. Don’t worry, I let my husband taste taste quite a few before carting them off to the bake sale and he gave them his seal of pumpkin-loving approval.  The other sign they were a hit?  We stopped by the bake sale table half an hour after dropping them off and they were gone.