Just Monkeyin' Around

This week my big project was monkey cake pops for my boss's daughter to take to school :)

I think they came out cute (in the end) but these monkeys definitely gave me a hard time haha.

These guys are chocolate cake inside, with Cream Cheese Frosting (yummm). After I got them formed and sticked, I stuck M&M's on the sides to look like ears:

The next step was to dip them in Dark Chocolate Candy Melts and let them dry... This is where the problems started. Somehow the tiny M&M's had a big gravitational impacts - about half of the monkeys were getting cracked heads from the stick trying to slide all the way through the top! The only solution was to make some of the monkeys flat headed, but with some strategic sprinkling they turned out just as cute :)

After the Dark Chocolate was dry, I piped on the little monkey faces using Butterscotch Candy Melts (delicious! I could eat those all by themselves!).

This little guy was one of the flat heads, before hair.

After that dried as well, it was time for eyeballs! I have found that using a tiny bit of Light Corn Syrup is very effective for sticking on small details like eyes, and leaves a much cleaner look without all of the drippy reside. I just paint it on using a small paintbrush (which I only use for this purpose) and stick it right on the pop:

The final step was to draw on a smiling monkey face using my Americolor pens. Then I went back and forth for a while - Do monkeys have noses? Are they pink or black? Will they look too much like dogs? But in the end I decided their faces looked too empty, and added a little black sugar pearl for a nose.

I used my tiny tweezers to get a good grip on the tiny pearls.

And then my monkeys were all done! I am excited for the customer to get them, and I hope her and her classmates enjoy them as much as I think they will :)

That's it for this post. Don't forget to check out my Facebook on Tuesday for the next free giveaway :)