Well, at least I tried.

My husband's birthday was Sunday. I love birthdays because I love to celebrate, especially celebrations about people I love! For his birthday, Jared requested that I make Cake Pops versus buying a cake from a grocery store which is what I have done for all his past birthdays.  Cake Pops are essentially balls of cake on a lollipop stick. Jared was originally introduced to the idea by two talented ladies in our LifeGroup class at church and he has been in love with the idea ever since.  So I went to Books-A-Million and ordered my Cake Pops book in preparation for the big day.  The book is so cute and full of great ideas for people that are skilled enough to follow the instructions.

Jared originally requested that I make the monkey cake pops included in the book.  Boy, did they look difficult.  I agreed to make them - I mean it was his birthday - but I was secretly thinking "YOU MUST BE KIDDING".  I mean they were like little monkey heads with eyes, ears, mouths, drawn on smiles in other words - a lot of detail.  Didn't he know I am an amateur?

Saturday morning, I ventured out for the items needed and it was a long list.  Luckily, the baking powers-that-be were on my side because I could not find a lot of the items needed.  This could have been completely my fault as I had no idea what I was looking for.  Needless to say, the monkeys were axed and we went with a simpler recipe.  "Simple" cupcake pops with swirls on top...

Looks pretty easy, right? Well, looks can definitely be deceiving.  Everything started out very well.  To make these beautiful desserts, you must first make basic cupcake pops - precious little things - this is what I am talking about!

The first few steps worked out great.  I figured out I am good at a few things.  The first is making cakes from a box mix.  I know it isn't rocket science but it is a step in the right direction!  Also, I let the cake cool for the right amount of time and crumbled and assembled them in balls well! Things were looking up.

How quickly things changed.  After making and cooling the cake balls, you were supposed to put them through a flower-shaped cookie cutter and VOILA! - they became cupcakes.  Mine did not - they just looked like misshapen cake balls.  Next was dipping them into candy coating.  I have to admit, the candy coating was cool!  These little disks turn into melted candy ready for your dipping pleasure after about 2 minutes in the microwave.  Dipping was difficult!  The candy was so thick and took away a lot of the shape of the pops!

I also forgot to read ahead in the instructions to see that you had to stick the lollipop sticks in as soon as the balls were dipped!  So one ball was too hard to put on a stick by the time I read this section.  So after all of that, this is what we got...

Well, at least I tried. Two on a stick but nothing like the picture, two with the stick all the way through and one lone ranger just laying there.  We ate them immediately and it turns out they were pretty good so at least, they had that going for them.

Good things that came from this experiment:

1.)  It was a lot of fun!

2.)  Jared and I had a great laugh at the finished product.

3.)  I learned a lot for next time.

Any suggestions from other baker's out there on things I can do to make the dipping and shaping easier?

Lastly, I told Jared he has to rate everything I make for purposes of the blog and he gave this creation a ...drum roll please....

Not too shabby - I'll take it!