My better half, absolutely loves chocolate and peanut butter, so for his big five year anniversary in our fellowship, he requested Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake Pops for the big celebration.
I am assuming that whoever coined the phrase “..a match made in heaven” must have meant chocolate and peanut butter, because these are two flavors that seriously boost one another up. But then when you add cake pops to that equation, well you have that match made in heaven multiplied tenfold.
Which brings me to the topic of this particular post which is about how to make Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake Pops, or better yet, how to make awesome, delicious, O.M.G, I can’t stop eating these fantabulous Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake Pops…or maybe that is just me 🙂
I guess the only way to find out, is to make them yourself and be the judge.
This is what you will need!
- Chocolate cake (prepared)
- Peanut Butter Butter Cream Frosting {RECIPE HERE}
- Chocolate candy melts (Available Here)
- Peanut Butter candy melts (Available Here) or make your own.
- Lolly pop sticks (Available Here)
- A squeeze bottle (if you have one) (Available Here)
- Baking sheet lined with wax paper or parchment paper
- Styrofoam or something to stand the pops in as they set (covered in Saran wrap)
Cake pops are seriously simple to make, but do require some time and patience, so make sure you have a chunk of time available to you in order to prepare them. I have two children ages 1 & 2, so whatever time I have MUST be used to the best of my ability.
For these cake pops although you can use any cake recipe you wish, to save time I opted for a good old box recipe, but the choice is yours. When I use a box recipe I also CUT the amount of oil that the box recipe asks for and replace the difference with apple sauce. (75% apple sauce to 25% oil) I’m sure you could do this with any recipe though. (It comes out to 1/4 cup of applesauce and 2 tbsp of oil.)
This is huge people.…..this one little change eliminates the need to refrigerate them, which in turn prevents them from cracking after you dip them and eliminates the oil from the mix oozing out from the pop.
When your cake has fully cooled, break it up into a bowl until it is finely crumbled. Add in the frosting and mix until it has all been incorporated, it will be very mushy looking. For one 13 x 9 or two 8″ rounds, I use 1/4 to 1/3 cup of frosting. You do want a nice balance of cake and frosting, and not just all of one or the other. If you use my recipe you may wan tot cut the recipe in half and save the remainder for something else as you will have some leftover.
When you are done mixing it all, let it sit, for a few minutes before you start rolling it out. I don’t really have a reason why, it’s just what I do:)
I measure out a heavy Tbsp. for each pop. I have found that measuring also helps to keep the balls roughly the same size. Roll each ball between your palms until you have all your little yummy pops to be, lined up.
After you rolled them all out, put them to the side and start and start to prepare your chocolate. You can melt your chocolate in one of two ways, using a double boiler or in the microwave, which ever method you prefer is the one you should use.
When your chocolate is ready, take a candy stick and a cake pop and one at a time and dip one end of the candy stick into the chocolate and push it gently into the cake pop, no more than half way. This helps to mesh the cake to the stick and helps when you dip them into the chocolate.
By the time you finish putting all the sticks in, the first one’s should be ready to dip. If not give them a few more minutes to set.
When you are ready to start dipping them, it is very important to have the chocolate be at the right consistency. (This goes for any type of chocolate dipping) If it is not thin enough, you will have big gloppy balls of chocolate and probably have them fall off the stick into the chocolate.
Holding the pop by the stick, dip it into the chocolate straight down. I tend to pull them up and swirl them to help free it of excess chocolate.
You can also tap the pop gently on the side of the bowl to remove the excess chocolate, rolling it if necessary.
After your done place them into the Styrofoam, so the chocolate can set on the pops. As they are setting, you can begin to get the peanut butter candy melts ready. I broke them up and placed them into a Wilton squeeze bottle I had, melting them in the microwave, with the cap off. When they are at the right consistency (melted) squeeze a squiggly or whatever design you choose over the top of each pop.
If you don’t have peanut butter candy melts available, just add in a tbsp of creamy peanut butter to the leftover chocolate and it should work just as well. If you don’t have a squeeze bottle, you could use a decorating bag with a tip, or a plastic food storage bag with a small piece of the corner cut off, to pipe the melted chocolate onto the pops.
After you add the first set of lines, you may want to go back over in the opposite direction, to really heap it on. I tend to store the pops in the fridge until I am ready to serve them. But you can leave them out as well.
Hope you try these out and if so, that you enjoy them as much as everyone at my hubby’s celebration did. I would love to hear your feedback, so please do feel free to comment below!
