Easy Cake Pops Using Box Mix

Little Sis REALLY wanted to make cake pops over the weekend but I wasn’t as thrilled. I’ve never been crazy about thought of traditional cake pops. Mushing a perfectly fine cake up with frosting using your hands?! Eeeeek. Instead, I just made them like regular cake using my cake pop pans. “But that’s just not the right way” according to Little Sis. So I indulged her and we made them just the way she wanted. Easy cake pops using box mix!

Easy Cake Pops Using Cake Mix

Little Sis picked out Betty Crocker’s Super Moist Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix and a tub of chocolate frosting. We unfortunately didn’t start this process until 8:30pm on a Sunday night. By the time the cake was baked and cooled, it was 10pm! In my laziness and haste, even though Little Sis wanted to add the frosting gradually, I just dumped the whole tub in. Whoopsie! It turned out to be way too mushy, but they still tasted yummy so we pressed on anyway. She was so sweet about it too – a little disappointment mixed in with genuine forgiveness. I’m so sorry for not listening to you, Little Sis, and trying to sabotage your cake pops!!

She was just barely able to form them into little balls using a small ice cream scoop. She carefully placed them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Then she inserted sticks dipped in melted chocolate and put them in the freezer. They’re supposed to freeze for 2+ hours which put us past midnight on a Sunday night to finish them. Ugh. Luckily, I was able to convince her to wait until after school and soccer practice the next day. Whew!

Little Sis isn’t so little any more, is she?

The Rest of the Story

To add to my cake pop story, I felt so guilty about not letting Little Sis “gradually add the frosting” that while she was at school, I took the cake pops out of the freezer and let them thaw as I ran to the store to buy, yes, another box of cake mix! Insert sheepish grin emoji here.

I baked it is fast as humanly possible, as I was somehow running out of time again, dumped it in a big bowl and crumbled it up while it was still hot. After letting it sit for a little bit to at least stop steaming, I put it in the fridge for a faster cooling-off. FINALLY, once the cake crumbs were cool to the touch, I took the sticks out of ALL of the balls that we had made the night before and mixed them into the cake crumbs. No extra frosting was necessary and once re-formed, we had DOUBLE the number of non-mushy cake pops!

Well, the cake pops needed to freeze a bit longer than when Little Sis came home but luckily she had soccer practice shortly after school so she waited once again. After practice and dinner, she FINALLY went to town on the rest of her cake pops. All totaled, we made 64 of the cutest pumpkins along with a few ghosts which were made for testing purposes only.

She was excited to take them to school the next day to share with her friends at lunch. Since they taste best out of the fridge (ie that nice, perfect amount of crunch when chocolate is cold), I offered to drop them off to her just before lunch. Post-school report: her friends SWARMED her at lunch and her cake pops were critically acclaimed to be DELICIOUS. Yay! Cake pop success!

Melting Chocolate

Before you try this, let me add that melting chocolate can be quite a challenge. It was the hardest and most frustrating part about making these easy cake pops with box mix! Most recipes call for candy melts which melt and dip in a breeze, but most easily-found brands say “may contain nuts” so we avoid them as my girls are allergic to peanuts and tree nuts. Instead, I use baking chocolate chips. We used white chocolate tonight and let me tell you, not all white chocolate chips are created equal! Be sure to use a higher quality brand!

Of the several brands we tried, Nestle’s Premier White Morsels melted the best and the grocery stores’ brands melted the worst. I didn’t have to add nearly as much vegetable oil to get the right consistency for dipping. My guess is Ghiradelli would work well, too.

I typically just melt the chocolate in the microwave on high about 15-20 seconds at a time. Stir the chocolate well after each time. After about 3 times, give the chocolate a good stir. If it feels hot to the touch but it’s still chunky, don’t panic! Simply take the bowl out, stir it continuously and the chocolate will continue to melt and thin. Add about 1/2 tsp of canola oil to thin it while stirring. Make sure it doesn’t get too hot or it will seize.

Also beware when adding food coloring. Gel coloring immediately thickened up our melted chocolate and made it undippable. Desperate times called for desperate measures which meant I had to reacquire my liquid bottles of food coloring from Little Sis’ slime lab. Liquid food coloring worked WAY better. Here are some great tips from Master Class on how to melt chocolate to perfection.

Boxed Cake Mix Alternatives

As funny as this sounds from someone whose blog is called “Epicurean Adventures”, I LOVE boxed cake mixes. People look at me funny when I say that, but it’s true. I think it’s hard to beat the moistness and taste of a cake mix. lol. But if you’re not to concerned with “easy” and prefer to make your cake from scratch, here’s my new go-to chocolate cake recipe from Hershey’s. Little Sis’ friend Mac made a cake for her birthday a few years back and it was amazing! Sally’s Baking Addiction makes a great chocolate buttercream frosting, but keep in mind you only need 1 cup of it. Check out her vanilla sheet cake and vanilla buttercream frosting recipes too if you’re in the mood for vanilla cake pops.

Equipment You Will Need

For some reason, my equipment list isn’t showing up in my recipe plug in, so here’s a quick heads up of the items you will need. Some are optional. Check out my Amazon affiliate links below to see the items I like to use to make these.

• 32 candy sticks
• 13″ x 9″ cake pan
• 1 big bowl (we used a 5 qt bowl)
• small ice cream scoop
• piping bags for decorating
• parchment paper

Here’s a sampling of some of the easy cake pops using box mix. My favorite is the smiley face one. It’s SO cute, isn’t it?

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Christine, aka happyvballgirl : )

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