Heard of Cake Pops?

I hadn't heard of cake pops or cupcake pops, but apparently they are a relatively popular phenomenon invented by Bakerella (google her).  Basically you make a "sucker" out of cake and chocolate candy coating.  Some people are really ingenious and make pigs, or snowmen, or reindeer.  This seems like an appropriate Thanksgiving/Christmas holiday activity, so I am trying my hand at it.  As we speak.  I'm trying out cupcake pops, because my sister has a crush on cupcakes.  If they turn out I'll probably take some to her for a surprise tomorrow (she's going on an LDS mission to Nicaragua on December 15th) and some people are throwing a farewell bash for her.  Anyway.

The idea behind these cupcake pops is to mix a baked cake that has been crushed up and destroyed with an appropriate amount of cream cheese frosting and put them in the freezer to harden.  When they're hard, you can shape them into a cupcake shape with a small cookie cutter and then dip them in candy chocolate, and put them on a stick and decorate them however.

I made my cake with only two eggs instead of three because I forgot to get more eggs at the store.  How important could that last egg really be?  I figured I would pretend I put in three small eggs, instead of two large eggs.  That way, it would be just like I'd put in three eggs... I'll let you know how that reasoning goes.

I found one website that had shortcuts.  I like shortcuts.  So I microwaved the cake.  Who knew you could do that?!!!  It turned out like a normal cake in about 10 minutes.  Now that is crazy.  All the instructions say to use a food processor to blend up your cake, but my cake just sat there in the blender.  I had to just stir it up into crumbles.  I think you can skip the food processor step.  Your cake will turn into dirt when you're stirring frosting up into it.

There are a lot of useful websites and tips, but I liked this one a lot:
http://steamykitchen.com/7343-cupcake-pops-recipe-video.html

And now.... The moment of truth.  Did I succeed?

My First Cupcake Pop

On all of my subsequent cupcakes, I swirled the "frosting" (vanilla candy coating with food coloring) to make the cupcake look more authentic.

Aren't my cupcake pops packaged in a lovely fashion?

An artful shot for you

And here's all the ones I made today.

I actually got some good advice from my old visiting teacher for these.  Thanks, Natalie!  Pretty fun.  I particularly liked her recommendation to freeze whatever cake you don't use (then you don't have to finish it all off if you don't want to).