<H1>Coffee Cup Cake Bites</H1>

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!!