Day 16: Cake Pop Display

I had to make up for such a lame DIY yesterday with a super cute project perfect for gifting and bake sales.  A friend wanted to order some cake pops for her daughter's birthday, and I decided to give it a go.  Usually I make cake truffles and don't bother with the sticks, but I figured that surely I could manage to put some sweet little cake pops on a stick right?

Well lo and behold it was one of those days where everything that COULD go wrong, DID go wrong.  I received the 175 Best Cakepop Recipes book as a gift a few months ago, and I have a particular recipe in there that I really like to use for a variety of flavors with some slight alterations.  Well, my book was nowhere to be found.  Of course.  So instead of using my recipe that would make 48 I used a recipe from the book that comes with the cakepop maker that makes 24.  Don't get me wrong I used to always use that recipe, but at this point it was stressing me out.

I originally was going to make 2 different flavors and have lots of leftovers.  NOW I HAVE NO LEFTOVERS.  Oh, the humanity.

So, I added fresh strawberries into the mix.  Now, I have heard a million times on Cupcake Wars that fresh fruit alters baking a tad.  And let me tell you it did.  They needed longer time in the machine, they did not end up raising as much, and at this point I was in full out panic mode!  You can't sell someone HALF POPS. 

Luckily, I have developed the ability to roll with the punches.  I quickly decided to cut the top part off the pop so as to effectly make it half what a pop should be, and to put two "halves" on each stick, with filling in the middle. 

So I go to clean the mixer blade and I cannot get the darn thing off the freaking mixer. We have two different kitchenaids, one older than the other, and sometimes the older blade and the newer mixer just don't play nicely.  So I mixed the icing by hand, which I cannot stand doing.  Archaic measures.  Pfft.

But I got it done, made the cake pop samiches and froze them for a bit.  It made it much easier to dip them in chocolate and they dried much faster. And by the time I got them all on the stand, it made it all worthwhile.  They were so cute.  So in addition to telling you how I rolled with the punches, here is the adorable stand and how to make it.

Materials:
-Florist Foam, the dry blocks are fine, especially if your container is square/rectangle
-Some container, I used the lid of a cake box
-Small Treat bags with twisty ties
-Scrapbook paper in a coordinating color
-Tape

To make this cutie, I cut the florist foam ever so slightly smaller than the lid.  I of course never seem to have real tape (how does one have an entire craft mecca and NO TAPE?!), so I used mounting dots to attach my paper to the blocks.

For the record, this is about a 6x6 box lid, and I found a 6 pack of foam for $3.99, and used a 40% off coupon.  I had to use two blocks and cut a few pieces off of them.

After I put the cake pops in the treat bags and tied them, I used a pen to puncture the paper/foam and then pushed the cake pop stick in further to secure it in.  I would advise doing one hole at a time so that you can make sure that the cake pops have enough room.

You can also use the box itself as a lid if you need it for transportation purposes.

This is definitely a project that can be any season, any color, and is very simple to put together.  This is perfect for a bake sale display as well.

Until next time!