Top Tips For the Best Cake Pops

Cake pops are a fun and creative way to enjoy a sweet treat. They are perfect for birthday parties, celebrations, and holidays.

While these bite-sized treats may look like a simple dessert, there are definitely a few tricks that go into making them look flawless. Follow these tips and tricks to become a master cake pop creator!

What Is A Cake Pop

A cake pop is a treat that is made by combining crumbled baked cake with frosting until it forms a dough. This dough is placed onto a stick, dipped in chocolate, and then decorated with either more chocolate or sprinkles.

1. Save Time with Storebought Ingredients

Of course, you can make homemade cake and buttercream frosting and use it to make cake pops. However, using boxed cake mix and store-bought frosting is an easy way to cut out some excess prep time.

If you are on an even tighter time crunch, you can even purchase a baked cake (with or without frosting) from the bakery section at your local grocery store and crumble it up to make cake pops.

See my cake and frosting recipes below for inspiration:

2. Crumble the Cake

You can use your hands or your stand mixer to crumble your cake until it is ultra-fine. You don't want any large chunks, or it can cause your cake pops to fall apart.

Sometimes, your baked cake might have some extra crispy corners or edges. Go ahead and trim those off before crumbling the cake.

3. Don't Use Too Much Frosting

The frosting is added to the crumbled cake to act as a binding agent so that you can form your balls. However, too much frosting will make your dough too soft, and the balls will fall off the treat sticks.

Start with small amounts of frosting and add more as needed until your dough is a consistency that is similar to Play-Doh modeling clay. You should only need about three tablespoons or so of frosting.

4. Chill the Dough for Rolling

You can roll your cake balls as soon as you are done mixing your dough. However, if you want perfect cake balls, then I recommend letting the dough chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or up to an hour.

Cold cake pop dough is easier to roll into smooth balls, so you can fix any misshapen balls or cracks.

Alternatively, you can refrigerate the shaped cake pop dough balls and smooth out the edges before dipping. They hold their shape once chilled, and are easier to work with.

5. Have Uniform Dough Balls

It is important that all of your cake pops are the same size so that everyone is getting the same amount of cake.

A typical cake pop is one ounce. You can portion your cake pop dough with a kitchen scale, a cookie scoop, a meatballer, or a cake ball maker.

Also, keep in mind that if you make your cake pops much larger than one ounce, they will probably fall off of the stick because they will be too heavy.

6. Use Almond Bark or Candy Melts

You can certainly dip your cake pops in real melted chocolate. However, chocolate is more temperamental when it comes to melting it, and you will most likely need to temper it.

Additionally, chocolate has a lower melting point than candy melts or almond bark. This means that if serving your cake pops outside, you may have to deal with the coating melting much easier at lower temperatures (which can make a mess).

Candy melts and almond bark are easy to melt and hold up nicely when packaged and transported. They also don't tend to melt off your assembled cake pops as easily at most temperatures.

7. Don't Overheat Your Candy Melts

When candy melts are overheated, they will become lumpy and seize. This is easily avoided by heating them in the microwave in short bursts and stirring well in between each session.

When in doubt, check the packaging instructions for how to properly melt your candy melts.

8. Correctly Thin Your Chocolate

You don't want to have chocolate that is too thick for dipping. Instead, the ideal consistency should be smooth and runny.

If your chocolate or candy melts are too thick, try adding small amounts of coconut oil, Crisco, or paramount crystals.

Whatever you do, do not add water. This will cause your chocolate to seize.

9. Use Chocolate on the Sticks

Dip the end of your treat sticks into your melted candy melts or chocolate before inserting the stick into your cake balls. This added chocolate will act as glue to help keep the ball on the sticks.

Make sure you let the balls sit for a few minutes to give the chocolate a chance to harden before fully dipping the cake pops.

10. Dip Room Temperature Cake

While chilled cake pop dough is easier to roll into balls, you'll want to make sure that you give these balls about 20 minutes at room temperature to take off the chill.

If you dip cake straight out of the fridge or freezer, the temperature difference with the warm melted chocolate will cause the cake pops to crack.

11. Tap & Rotate

The best technique for dipping your cake pops is to fully submerge them in the melted chocolate (making sure they are fully covered), remove them, and then tap the stick on the edge of the container.

This tapping will cause any excess chocolate to fall off so that it doesn't run down the sticks. The tapping motion will also cause the chocolate to run to one side, so twirl the cake pop to the opposite side and tap a few more times to smooth everything out.

12. Use A Stand or Make Your Own

After dipping, you have a few different options.

First, you can place your cake pops on a piece of parchment paper with the stick pointing upwards. This unique way of letting the chocolate harden removes any need for a stand, and you can serve them on a platter.

If you want the traditional appearance with the stick facing down, you will need a cake pop stand. Luckily, it is easy to make your own. You can push the sticks into a styrofoam block, poke holes in an upside-down box, or even push the sticks into an egg carton.

Either way, make sure you give the pops a few minutes for the melted chocolate coating to fully harden and set.

13. Make them Ahead of Time

Cake pops can easily be prepared in advance.

The dough can be made ahead of time and then stored in the fridge for a few days or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

To go a step further, you can roll out your cake pop dough into individual balls and place them onto a baking sheet without touching each other. Flash-freeze the dough balls for an hour or two.

Once frozen solid, place the balls into a freezer storage bag or container. When ready, let them thaw before dipping.

Fully coated cake pops can also be frozen, but you will have to deal with condensation. Transfer them to the fridge to thaw before moving them to the counter.

Give them a few hours for the condensation to dry.

I hope that my tips and tricks have helped you out. Let me know in the comments what your favorite tips for making cake pops are.

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