When Megan originally asked me to take on the TS3 cake pop birthday party order I have to admit I was a little weary. She was going to be out of town in Germany so I was going to have to face the challenge myself. I got myself geared up and decided "What the heck! I like a good challenge!" However, there was still a small fear in me that things could turn out to be a huge disaster! I decided it was extremely important to have a test run to make sure it was indeed possible. I gathered all my fixings and let me tell you, there are a lot! A variety of Sprinkles, m&m's, Junior Mints, sunflower seeds & more. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to this stuff so I went to just about every possible place I could to find the perfect mustache colored sunflower seed for Mr. Potato Head. I think I got three different types but it ended up working great because one was perfect for the pig and one other perfect for the alien!
The biggest challenge for me was, believe it or not, Ham. I don't know why but the shape of his head was a bit hard to dip because of the uneven weight. Although I did have a few cracks, the majority of them turned out okay. For his ears, before the big dip, I stuck in pink sunflower seeds on each side. I ended up finding some perfect black metallic sprinkles for his beady little eyes. I broke up tiny heart sprinkles to achieve the pink in his ears and used a pink cake writing pen for his nostrils. I'm not a big fan of the Wilton's writers, I have AmeriColor Gourmet writers and those work great!
Mr. Potato Head looks hard but I would have to say he's probably the easiest. He just has a lot of steps. Once dipped, you immediately add the popsicle stick arms, the tiny butterscotch chip nose, the pink large flat circle candy disc ears and the Junior Mint hat. Once dry, I then took a tooth pick and added eyes, sunflower seed mustache and the m&m feet! To get the eyelid effect, I dipped the tiny white discs in some excess chocolate. You have to have patience for this, as it's very easy to mess it up.
The Alien was a little tricky but I'm really happy with the results. There are two keys things to make the aliens great a) buy the Wilton's candy melts in Vibrant Green & b) stick in the candy pieces BEFORE you dip the whole alien. For his ears, again I used chocolate covered sunflower seeds (Trader Joe's has some that are the perfect shade of yellow/green) and for his antenna I found some green hard, thin licorice. The dip takes patience because of the extra parts already on the cake, you really have to make sure everything is covered and the excess is gently taken off. You can stick eyes on immediately and then after it's dry use your black gourmet marker for the mouth!
The display turned out pretty cute. Our hostess wanted a Sunnyside cardboard box. Instead of using an actual box (I just thought it might be hard to find the perfect shape, plus worried about weight of pops), I bought two thick cardboard boxes with handles from the Target $1 bin, covered them with kraft paper and painted on Sunnyside. I liked the idea of a banner so I cut out circles and bought some red glitter letters from Michael's.
This project was time consuming but I do think they turned out great and it definitely boosts your confidence in cake pop making!
