Coffee Cup Cake Bites

My Father-in-Law is celebrating his 80th birthday and since he's such a coffee fiend, my Mother-in-Law is throwing him a coffee themed open house style party so all his friends can stop by & help him celebrate. She's planning on having finger foods and lots of cookies/desserts ... the coffee theme idea really had me intrigued... what can I make to go with the coffee theme?!? I'm so into cake pops & bites right now that I decided to see if I could do something along those lines and came up with this:

I made cake balls just like you would make for any regular cake pop, but I put them in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes (this makes them easier to shape into other shapes besides round balls).  Once the cake balls had firmed up I took them out and began shaping them into cylinder shapes (they looked kind of like beige marshmallows). 

I took pretzels (tiny twists) and cut them so I could use only the rounded sections.  I placed one rounded pretzel piece into each cake cylinder to create the handle of the coffee mug:

I used a popsicle stick to dip the coffee mugs into melted white candy chips, used a toothpick to help get the excess candy coating off of the mugs, and then using the toothpick (pushing down on the top of the coffee mug) I gently pushed it off the popsicle stick onto wax paper to finish setting up.

I attempted to use special cookie/candy gel (black) to make the coffee in the top of the mug but the color didn't turn out right so I ended up using melted chocolate.

I had previously purchased a cheap candy writer at Michael's for writing on cake pops and found when trying to do the baby shower cake pops that it didn't work very well.  I did some research online and discovered that 'Gourmet Writers' was one of the most highly rated edible writing products so I found some on Amazon and after this project I HIGHLY recommend them:

What a fun project this has been! I hope that all of my Father-in-law's friends enjoy the coffee cup cake bites! I can't wait for the next opportunity to make cake bites!!

Cupcake Bites!

I tried making Cupcake Bites for the first time tonight... very fun! I think I either need a larger candy mold or I need to make smaller cake balls though. Here are some pics from tonight:

Previous cakes & cupcakes

Here are some of my previous cakes & cupcakes:

This was a Tinkerbell cake I made for my daughter's 3rd birthday

This is the start of a bridal shower cake I did for my friend who got married in Vegas...

This was the final product of the Vegas bridal shower cake:

The next three pictures are a cake I made for my son's 'end of season' baseball party:

This cupcake was also part of an 'end of season' baseball party. I incorporated little chocolate baseballs and did green grass frosting... I thought they turned out pretty well.

This was a GI Joe birthday cake for my son's 8th birthday:

This was for my daughter's first birthday:

Christmas Cake Pops

I am so grateful to Bakerella for creating cake pops! If you don't own her book ("Cake Pops"), you should get it.  She also has a website: http://www.bakerella.com/ and in my opinion is a creative genius!

Since receiving her book as a Christmas gift (thank you Honey!!) I've had so much fun trying to recreate some of her wonderful treats!

These are the Snowman cake pops I made at Christmas time.  My mother-in-law loves snowmen, so I thought this would be a fun treat to share with her.

I found this cute little basket that looks like a top hat at Michael's craft store and thought it would make a perfect way to display the cake pops.  I placed a piece of styrofoam in the bottom of the basket, added some green gift bag grass and stuck the cake pops in!

This was my first attempt at making a cake pop.  I wanted something super cute for our Christmas cookie/treat exchange and decided on Christmas tree cake pops.  The candy coating ended up being a little thick for my taste, but not too bad for a first try!

Baby Shower Cake Pops

I made these cake pops for a friend's baby shower and they were a hit! I used vanilla cake and cream cheese frosting for the cake pop (my current favorite combo), dipped them in white candy melts, used edible black marker (for cookies & such) to draw on the eyes/eyelashes, melted chocolate for the hair, pink candy sprinkle hearts for the hair bow, a pink candy from those candy necklaces for the pacifier and a pink cupcake paper for the bonnet.

You could do the same with blue items for a baby boy shower and the display options are wide open too.  I place some crinkled up tissue paper in a cute lavendar basket I had lying around the house and gently laid the cake pops in the basket.  It looked like a bunch of sleeping babies... super cute.