- Hey, I'm John Kanell.
Today on Preppy Kitchen,
we're making monster cake pops.
So let's get started.
First off, I made my favorite chocolate cake
and a batch of vanilla buttercream.
Both of those recipes are in the description box.
I'm gonna crumble this cake into a bowl.
I wanna get smaller pieces,
but it doesn't have to be perfectly uniform small pieces
because we're gonna mix this up.
I got too excited by the idea of crumbling the cake,
so I'm separating my buttercream out
and I'm gonna leave about a cup of buttercream
in my mixing bowl.
This is for decorating.
This is for the cake pop interior.
This is our chocolate buttercream to be,
we're gonna add some cocoa powder
and a little bit more milk.
And then we're gonna crumble the cake in.
One tablespoon.
One tablespoon of milk.
So now we're gonna crumble
all of that delicious chocolate cake into the bowl.
This would be a really fun part for kids.
With clean hands.
I wanna tell you,
this isn't the perfect cake pop for Pinterest,
like a human didn't make it, it was a robot cake pop.
These are cute cake pops that your kids can make,
there's fun and low stress.
Once this mixing bowl gets up to this line right here,
then I'm gonna stop.
The rest of the cake can just be for snacking on,
and you can freeze it for later
if you want to.
Gonna lock the mixer down
and then mix on low,
nice and cookie doughy.
Optional addition would be three tablespoons of sprinkles.
These are orange and black sprinkles
for a little Halloween vibe.
Now it's time to scoop it out.
I want a cookie scoop that big.
A one and 1/2 inch size.
Here's the fun part.
You're gonna roll this into a ball.
Don't worry about it being the perfect ball,
because it's gonna get covered in buttercream.
You're gonna pop these onto a baking sheet
and these get frozen.
If you want,
you can make all of this up as cake pops
or you could freeze some and thaw it out for later,
you don't have to make it all at once.
Don't be afraid to press a little bit too
because this is still pretty light and airy,
which is nice,
but you want it to be a little bit firmer
so that it will hold its shape more.
So if you don't freeze these,
basically they're gonna fall off the stick.
The candy melt is gonna be too hot
and it'll melt the nice spherical shape you've made.
And this is gonna get really frustrating.
I'm gonna freeze this for at least 20 minutes
so they really set up.
In the meantime,
gonna do a little cleanup,
maybe have a bite to eat.
We'll be right back.
While those cake pops are getting nice and set up,
I'm gonna get those candy melts melted.
If you haven't used candy melts before,
they are little wafers and they're like chocolate,
but they melt really easily in the microwave.
They don't seize up like chocolate
and they're great for coating things
because they've got a nice, hard shell.
You don't temper them.
Melt up about that much,
it's like how much do you need to dip?
How many colors are you using?
I have some orange and some black ones as well.
Into the microwave,
probably a minute and change,
but at 1/2 power.
The last time I ate cake pops,
which was a while ago,
I had these blocks of styrofoam
leftover from a shipping box,
and I stuck my little sticks in there.
They need a place to live
because they can't be on their sides.
So that works fine.
But since I knew I was making this video for you,
I splurged and got myself a little cake pop stand.
Now, in batches,
you're gonna pull out your frozen cake balls.
Don't take them all out at once because if you do that,
they'll thaw and get too soft.
So just get a couple at a time,
like two to four,
and dip them and then stand them up and keep working.
I have my frozen cake balls
and you can see they became a little bit saggy
on the bottom.
So give them a very quick re-roll
just to make them nice and round again.
Place your lollipop stick halfway through.
And now we're gonna dip the cake pop in.
You can dip and also spoon the candy melt over it,
so it's better to not completely submerge it.
When you do that,
what tends to happen is the cake pop falls off.
Swirl it up in here,
tap off the excess
because there is a lot of extra candy melt on here.
And if it has any weird dripping nonsense,
you can literally use your finger or a spatula
and just smooth it out.
It's already starting to set up
because the cake ball was so cold.
Place that on your stand.
It doesn't look like much now,
but isn't it get decorated and look completely different.
Roll, roll, roll.
Insert that in halfway through,
tap off all the excess.
Be patient and just keep the cake pop moving.
It needs to have some smooth side for you to work on
if you're not doing buttercream for all the way around.
Okay, those two are done.
Repeat this for all the other cake pops now.
You're probably gonna get some cracking
on your coating,
and that just happens
because everything is nice and warm in there
and super cold here.
This is almost freezing or setting up very quickly,
and it's contracting when it cools.
Has to do with kinetic energy and moving particles,
but that could be for another video.
I used to be a science teacher.
This would have been a really fun live video,
so you guys can give me suggestions of what to decorate.
Next time, let me know in the comments.
As the candy melt cools down,
you're gonna see it gets kind of lumpy, funky.
That's okay, monsters can be whatever shape you want,
but you can also just heat the candy melt up a little bit
so it warms up and stays pliable.
If your candy melt is giving you problems like this one was,
you can just add a little bit of vegetable oil
and mix it in super well.
Has to be really well mixed in
because any streaks of vegetable oil won't set up.
Last one down,
then we're gonna decorate them up.
Setting my cake pops aside,
and now I'm dividing my buttercream into three batches.
Leave a little bit white for just in case I changed my mind.
One batch is gonna be black for some black hair.
You have to use a lot of black, not gonna lie.
And also if you're using black,
kinda turns gray when you mix it up,
but it'll turn back to black as it dries.
When you're making black buttercream,
add a little bit of blue to it,
and that'll help darken it up
and give it more of a black look.
Mix that up.
I'm using gel food colorings,
and I have a link for that on the description box.
Oh, perfect.
So black.
You have to know that anyone who decorates cakes
or does buttercream coloring,
when you get that nice black right away,
it is like Christmas morning.
I gotta tell you.
And let me know in the comments
if you understand what I mean.
That's done, green.
I would add a little bit of black.
I want that kind of Oscar the Grouch Green.
Last color, I want some purple,
it's like a purple monster.
Oh, look how pretty that is.
This one's the beautiful monster.
She signed a modeling contract.
Okay, here's the thing.
I have two boxes.
One box is so nicely organized.
This is the tip we want.
It's a grass tip,
tiny little holes in here
that'll be extruding out the buttercream.
This box is not organized.
This is in the one day pile,
like one day I will organize this box
and it's gonna be great.
All right, so I have a metal grass tip,
a plastic grass tip,
which is actually kinda better.
And then I have these mega grass tips
that I use for my shag cake.
I just realized I have no plan for these (laughs).
I'm gonna just go with the flow,
but there's a couple of things.
I told Brian I needed some candy
and he got so excited
and bought me a like mountain of candy.
I need like this much for decoration,
but that's great.
Here, I have some fruit roll-up kind of material.
I'm gonna cut this out
and make it into little mouths or tongues.
And I have big sour straws like this,
and we can cut those open and do stuff with them too.
I also have candy eyes,
and more candy eyes.
It's time to get comfy and start decorating.
This guy, I wanna see
if I can give him a little mop of black hair on top
with some hunted monster eyes in the front.
So you push.
Gotta be the worst hairdresser in the world.
This guy's gonna be Cedric.
He's quirky with an edge,
but he'll be your best friend.
Right now, I'm going to get a little bit of candy melt
that I'll put on with a stick,
and we'll pop some eyes on this guy.
Things got really intense very fast.
Ah, so cute.
This guy is done.
We're gonna go a little bit more intense
for some of the other ones.
Okay, this monster's name is gonna be Zed.
He's gonna have purple hair,
a big beard and just big green antenna.
He's from another planet,
but he's still really friendly.
He looks like a giant orange eyeball.
When you're doing hair,
you can build it up.
So if it doesn't look right at first,
just add another layer right on top
and you can get more depth.
Giving you a real big beard here.
And now maybe we should have a bunch of little eyes,
that's kinda creepy.
If that candy melt's not working,
just use buttercream as glue.
There we go, aw,
our little monster friend.
So I cut up some of the sour straws
so we can just add in like little antenna like that.
There we go,
that looks pretty cute.
Let's make a big shaggy green monster.
I'm gonna call him Greeny.
For these guys,
we're gonna have just a big coating of fur.
So I'm using my big hair tip,
and we're gonna cover the entire cake pop.
And then once that's done,
we can decide where to put some eyes in.
What about a mouth, some antenna,
whatever we want.
And these are so much easier
because everything just sticks onto the buttercream.
See, that's so fast.
That's why I like these big hair tips.
So I have some more candy.
I opened it up.
You can roll it out to if you wanted to.
I think it would be cute
if this monster was giving us a raspberry like ugh.
Let's give him a big tongue, that's hilarious.
And then should he have eyes like that?
Yeah.
He's like, yes,
what do you want?
Not at all intimidating,
but he might be my favorite.
So cute, hey guy, how are you?
I'm gonna make a couple of him
because he might be my favorite.
And we're just gonna start improvising
and doing some more different types of designs.
Our purple monster is gonna be named Matilda.
She has big eyes on big stalks and purple fir,
she's gonna be really pretty.
Pipe that fur all over,
and then we can think of some fun decorations.
I think this one needs to have a little ice stalks.
So we're gonna stick some candy on top
and attach some eyes to the candy.
That looks good.
Actually using a tiny leaf tip
and we're just gonna pipe little teeth on.
That's pretty cute.
Look at that.
So you can really have fun with these,
don't stress about it.
The eyes don't have to be in the same place.
Nothing has to be even.
There's cute furry monsters,
and the kids are gonna love them.
This monster's name is gonna be Robert.
Hope you get a chance to make this recipe
and I'll see you in the next video.
If you like this recipe,
check out my Halloween playlist.