The Bake Pop Pan Incident

Silly me!  Deciding to try something brand new, something I've never done before, 3 hours before the New Year's Eve party I was to attend....(Santa bought Bake Pop pans for Christmas.  My toddler-going-on-teen, being bombarded with infomercials, put them on her Christmas list early on and Santa didn't dissappoint!)..So I decide to make cake pops for the party.  I ventured out on NYE and hit the local grocery store.  I bought 2 different flavored cake mixes, 2 boxes of flavor-matched pudding(suggested on Bake Pop instructions) and 2 containers of coordinating icing, ya know, just in case things didn't work out and I had to make them the regular way!

I decided to go with Red Velvet. My favorite. Following the instructions that came with the pans that say to follow the directions on the boxed cake mix BUT add an extra egg (did it), add a pudding mix, (did it), substitute milk for the water and cut the amount in half (did it). I also added the correct amount of oil called for on the box mix. No changes there in the BP instructions.
So far so good.

Into the mixer for the appropriate amount of time and spooned in pans sprayed with cooking spray.  Now it says to fill them up so that's what I did.  I filled both pans, that's 36 pops (of course Santa brought the free set, as well) and...

...still had enough left over...

....for 10 more!  That's 46 pops from 1 boxed cake mix!  I'm SURE I could've gotten more.  I ate some raw mix.  Oh well, that's how I roll.

Not quite ready for the 350 degree preheated oven JUST yet.

I sprayed the lids with cooking spray as well, put them on the bottom pans and attached them with the little, yellow, silicone-y, rubber-y things that keeps the pans together. On a side note, those yellow things are definitely necessary because...






(Note: This oven says it's Self Cleaning but supposedly a human is supposed to tell it when it needs to be cleaned. I've never done it. THAT'S my husband's job so judge HIM!)


...this is what happened! Without those holders, I'm sure things would have taken a turn for the worse. The instructions say to bake for 25 -30 minutes. I took these babies out before 20 and they were quite overdone which...

...made it really easy to pop those volcano-tops off. 

The tops, btw, had a kind of styrofoamy feel to them. My son ate some anyway.

After they cooled a bit, I popped off the lids nd this is what I got.  Cake pops!  Slightly overdone, with little nipples on the top and a ring around the middle where the pans meet!

Here are the tops from both pans.  Next time I will fill the pans a little LESS than full and maybe squeak out a few MORE pops.  This is wasteful.

Here's a closeup.  Those rings were overdone enough that I just ran my finger around them and they crumbled off.

I filled the third pan (last 10) a bit less full and still had overflow.  Now if you'll notice the top left pop, you'll see that it's quite a bit smaller than the others.  That's the RUNT of the litter!  I guess I didn't have that well filled quite enough!

I also cut the baking time WAY back!  25-30 minutes really didn't make sense to me initially anyway.  I kept testing this batch with my little cake tester and they were done within about 11-13 minutes.  This batch wasn't overdone so they looked a little better BUT ALL of the cake pops were kind of dry.

At that point, I didn't care anymore.  I melted some white chocolate chips (which DO NOT melt well) and some milk chocolate MELTS (which DO melt well), rolled/dipped the cake balls in the chocolate and topped them with assorted sprinkles and such.  They looked pretty.  They tasted OK but were a little dry.  I took them to the party and everyone seemed to like them.  I wasn't REALLy worried because I figured it was New Year's Eve and everyone would be drunk anyway!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished product so the next day, my brother's girlfriend posted this picture on fb for me! 

AFTERMATH

The pans cleaned up easily although there were 4 to wash (2 pans, 2 lids).

I will try this again, sometime in the future, and see how things turn out with a little tweaking.

Making cake balls the regular way seems to be a bit easier!