Pink Polka Dots!!

So my daughter recently turned one. I racked my brain for a theme for her birthday party and settled on pink and white polka dots. I turned to the mom's best friend for party planning, Pinterest! I found a cool idea for a polka dot cake using cake pops so I decided that's what I wanted to do for Cecilia's party. Here's the link to the blog that I borrowed the idea from.

I debated for a while how exactly I was going to make the cake. At first, I was going to use all white cake mix and use pink food coloring to make the cake pops. After browsing the baking aisle, I decided to use strawberry cake mix for the cake pops and white cake for the actual cake. I would then top the cake with strawberry icing and use white frosting to make white polka dots on the cake. I shopped for party supplies for a few months before the party so that I wouldn't spend a fortune at once. I found the cake pop pan on clearance at walmart, so I lucked out there!

The day before the party, Cecilia and I headed to my grandma's to do all the baking and cooking for the party. I started with the strawberry cake pops. The recipe book for the cake pops says to use pudding in addition to the cake mix. I didn't. I made mine like this: I used the cake mix, added one extra egg, and used milk instead of water. They came out great. Instead of cooking them for the full amount of time suggested on the box, I cooked them for 15 minutes. This ensures that they won't dry out during the second bake.

 

 One box of strawberry cake mix made 36 cake pops.

I decided to make Cecilia's cake first. I sprayed a 6 inch round pan with Baker's Joy spray with flour. Then I put a layer of white cake batter on the bottom of the pan. I added six cake pops so that it looked like this:

 

I poured cake batter over each pop to fill the pan about 3/4 full.

 

 

I was really worried that it was going to spill over so I cooked it on a cookie tray. Surprisingly the cake turned out beautifully with no spillage!

 

 

Total cook time was about 40 minutes. That's not including the time it took to cook the pops initially. To display the cake, I cut two circles of cardboard, taped them back to back, and wrapped them in foil.

 

 

I spread the strawberry icing on and then used a decorating bag with fancy tips to write on the cake and make the polka dots.

 

 

Even though I had previously experimented to make sure the polka dots would show up, I was worried they wouldn't. This is what the cake looked like just before Cecilia dove in!

 

 

In retrospect, I would have put more batter on the bottom of the pan so that the polka dots were a little more centered in the cake, but overall I was happy with how it turned out!

 

I also made an 11x14 inch cake for everyone else to have. I made it the same way as the small cake. I ended up using 3 white cake mixes total. This gave me enough to make both the small cake, the large cake, and one batch, 18, white cake pops.

 

 

The white dots around the edge are candy covered chocolate balls (sixlets) that I bought at Party City. The large cake also took about 40 minutes to cook. You can stick a toothpick in to make sure the cake is done, but try to aim where there isn't a cake pop since you may not get an accurate reading. I had leftover cake pops so I got vanilla flavored candy pieces to melt and coat the pops with. I coated the strawberry pops with white candy and the white pops with pink candy. I then busted out the creativity in me and displayed them like this:

 

 

I had fun making the cakes and all the other goodies.

 

For the white pops, I didn't altar the recipe any. I didn't use milk in place of water, or an extra egg. I just scooped the leftover batter into the cake pop pan. I hope this has inspired you to be creative! I forsee using my creativity bone for future birthdays!

 

Questions? Ask and I will do my best to answer!!