Helpful Tips Tuesday: Droopy Helmets

There are so many things wrong with this cake pop!  I debated putting it on the pop fail Friday post, but decided there's some good tips I could let you know about so this DOESN'T happen!

This was attempting to be a football helmet.  Yeah.  However, the problem did not lie in the shape of the cake, I think it would have turned out pretty cute...had I followed all of my own rules when dipping cake pops.

All the "how tos" out there tell you that you should keep your rolled up cake balls in the fridge until you are ready to dip.  Then only pull out 4-6 balls at a time as you are dipping, keeping the other ones in the fridge to keep them chilled.

I do keep the cake balls in the fridge, however I actually pull out 12-18 at a time to dip them, depending on how many I am doing for a particular order.  The balls do need to be chilled, however if they are too chilled, you will run into problems like cracking, oil running, etc.  The reason for this is because the cake contracts when it gets cold...then expands again when it gets warm.  So if you cover it with the candy coating too soon, it will crack the coating as it expands.  Once the cake balls have come back to room temperature and my candy melts are ready for dipping, the dipping part actually goes pretty fast, so I can easily do one to one and a half dozen at a time.

Now, why did my little football helmet turn out so ugly?  The mixture was already a little too moist from adding too much icing to the crumbled cake.  I can usually get away with it if it's just a little too moist, but since I had also left them out of the fridge for too long, the combination of that resulted in the picture you see at the top of this post.  As soon as I dipped it, it started falling off the stick, and no amount of turning, tapping, or gymnastics twirling was going to bring it back.  I didn't even try more than one.  I knew it was a lost cause.

So the tip is, let the cake come back to room temperature before you dip it, but don't wait TOO long!  Or you will have droopy, ugly football helmets that look more like - well, let's just call it as we see it - poop on a stick.