Gift Giving and Packaging

Well, I'm ready to start sharing the love!  Made a round of pops to give as gifts today... One set for a friend and her family (hubby + 2 kids) and one set for a few colleagues.  I flavored the candy coating for the first time--- 2 kinds of mint and cinnamon.

Then I played around with other packaging options...

Still struggling with tempering the candy coating.  UGH!  First batch of white dipped just fine, but then cracked upon cooling. And then when I needed to melt some more, I couldn't get it to a smooth dipping consistency for some reason. Went through 2 bags to no avail!  *SIGH*

Until next time...

Further Base Playing

Per my son's recommendation, I experimented with using a sugar sheet to cover a rice krispy treat base.  My idea was to wrap the base like a gift.  It wasn't easy--- Sugar sheet tears more easily than paper, and the slightest bit of moisture on the outside makes the color run.

It turned out OK nonetheless, but to accommodate the dimensions of the sheet, I made the base only an inch thick, which I learned is not thick enough to securely hold the pops upright.

I considered also  making a fondant ribbon, but upon discovering the price of rolled fondant, decided to experiment with making it myself at some later point in time.  Here's the ribbon-less gift base...

[NOTE TO SELF FOR NEXT TIME: Get one of those smoothing things so that the surface doesn't look so wavy!]

I made "cake" balls from the edges of the rice krispy treats that I had trimmed off...

And here they are again with snowflake sticker decorations...

All in all, I liked the effect. I especially liked the green and white stripes. They made the display feel "clean" and "mod," somehow.  What do you think?

Holiday Pops, Round 3: Fun and Fanciful

With a head full of further lessons learned and new ideas, I set out on another aisle-roaming expedition in search of further inspiration for pop adorning, presentation, and packaging. And here are the results... (My favorite batch to date)


"CLIP":

BUTTONS

TAGS (Pre-patterned crafting paper or card stock, which I stamped):

STICKERS:

MINI ORNAMENTS:

BELLS AND BANGLE:

PACKAGING:

Up next... Rice krispy cake stand made to look like a wrapped gift (with a sugar sheet) and silver and gold holiday pops.  (Need a little more practice working with dipping and piping the candy coating)  Then it's on to the real deal... Making and delivering pops as Christmas presents.

Holiday Pops, Round 2: The Candy Cane Effect

The next idea for Holiday gifts that I wanted to try out was a set of pops with nothing but white and shades of red, again with lots of sparkle, shine, and swirl, as was the plan with the blue and white frosted pops, in an attempt to create an impression of elegance .

Seems that with every experimental batch, there's some unforeseen "disaster." With this round, ONE of the disasters was that the filling was too dry, resulting in uneven surfaces and lots of cake plops into the candy coating.  UGH!

I had detoured into experimenting with rice krispy treats bases for the previous 2 batches or so, using the rice krispy treats to make the balls as well, so I had not yet gotten a good sense of the right balance of cake to frosting for achieving a ball that will dip well, while not being too dry nor too mushy. I was also still struggling with keeping the coating properly "tempered" (a term I have since learned from my culinary-trained son ;-), as well as with piping and sprinkling techniques. Here's a "taste" of the many failed pops...

Another disappointment was the shade of red. I couldn't seem to get it right with the candy coloring I was using.  (NOTE TO SELF: Buy the colored candy wafers next time. They cost the same as the white ones!)

Nonetheless, I did get some that I was more or less pleased with, and used those to play around with presentation and packaging for Christmas gifts. "Voici les resultats..."

I have found that with pretty much every "flop" so far, there has also come some sort of unexpected inspiration or learning. For this batch, it was the failed attempt to achieve the deep Christmas-red color I desired that inspired me to make breast cancer awareness pops someday. And I will! I have already started collecting trinkets, ribbons, stickers, etc with which to adorn the pops/displays. Maybe they could be auctioned, with the proceeds going to breast cancer research?  We'll see...

Coming up next... Holiday Pops, Round 3: Fun and Fancy

Holiday Pops, Round I: Frosted

A few weeks ago, I started playing around with some ideas for Holiday pops.  My first go-around was to try to create a set of  elegant-looking pops with a "frosted" feel. I had hoped to achieve this with coatings in subtle tones of blue, white, and silver with sparkly and shiny sorts of sprinkles and swirls. Well, they ended up looking like baby shower pops for a boy. (And this would be why I started experimenting weeks before "true" execution would be required.) There was way too much blue, and the white looked more gray than anything.  I imagine this was due to using chocolate cake under white coating, dripping off too much of the coating, and  then throwing silver dusting powder into an already bad mix.   The impression was anything but "elegant."( Never mind the effect gray food has on one's appetite!)

Otherwise, I was pretty pleased with the stand and display I created.  I made one of my rice crispy treats base, this time covered in white frosting, sprinkled with white sugar sparkles and coconut flakes, and presented on a mirror. I  also perched a white dove next to the pops--- something I had  found in the wedding aisle of Hobby Lobby for 50% off. And I made some tags to either slide along the sticks and some others to tie into ribbon. Notice that the photos feature 3 pops only out of the whole batch--- the least grayed of the lot!

Coming right up... Round 2: The Candy-cane Effect

Stands and Displays

After having skimped on Styrofoam for the housewarming pops, with the result being a display that was way too wobbly and unstable, I got to thinking about other options, and the idea of using rice krispy treats came to me. So I tried it, and it worked great! Here is a picture of my first rice krispy treats stand...

I suppose the same could be done with any sort of dessert bar. Here's another one I made, trying to achieve a tie-dyed effect for a 1960s-themed pops display, but I wasn't happy with the result...

So I decided to reconsider the Styrofoam approach, but this time, decided to work with a 6-pack of dry floral foam. I knew it would make for a good and sturdy base since that's what I use to secure my pops when I'm letting them set and when I'm decorating them. Here's a picture of the ones I use for that purpose...

And off I went to Hobby Lobby to get the 6-pack(only $3.99) and poke around for something 60s-ish to cover it with. I found hand-made tie-dyed paper that looks like cloth at 50% off (Well, it looked hand-made, anyway), some cheap ribbon, and a few fun little whimsical decorations to add to the display, and "PRESTO!" I had a "mod" cake pop stand. Here's the stand...

And here's a close-up of the display...

And now I have a base I can re-purpose with a new look for next time around, as long as I'm not giving the display away.

In the meantime, I had also found a cute little haystack at Walmart that I hoped would work as a stand for Thanksgiving pops. And it did! I fancied up the display with seasonal decorations I found at the dollar store and on sale at Hobby Lobby, along with ribbons and homemade tags I made with bargain stamps, stickers,and card stock. I was very pleased with the outcome!

And with that, I conclude today's "Stands and Displays" post. I have started playing with Christmas-themed pops, displays, and packaging for gifts and gatherings, so I suppose I'll probably write about that next...

The Making of a Housewarming Gift

And so… with my head full of lessons learned and subsequent ideas gathered, I set out to make my next round of cake pops as a housewarming gift for a friend.

Crumbled the cake more loosely… Added much less frosting… Made the balls smaller (thus, more manageable)… Heated candy coating just enough to melt, not more (to glump)… Didn’t freeze the balls for too long… And all was good. Well... better, anyway. Except I got so carried away with trying to perfect everything that it took me all night to make them! (Pretty much missed the party, arriving just in time to deliver the housewarming party pops for the hostess to go to bed! *SIGH*)

Anyway, the new challenge this time around was “makin’ ‘em purty” (as in gift-worthy in appearance and presentation, anyway) and transportable. Tags and ribbons were fun and went fine, but the presentation and transportability was another matter! Styrofoam is expensive! So... I bought the cheapest I could find--- a big thin sheet for $5 or so that I figured I could stretch across several arrangements. (RIGHT!)

My plan was to pretty up a shoe box, then line it with filler and place the Styrofoam on top of the filler so that the pops stuck up a good length out of the box. Then I would cover up the ugly styrofoam with cool paper confetti once the pops were in position, and all would be good.

Well, it was a good idea in theory, but in practice, it didn’t go very well. The Styrofoam was too thin to…
• secure the pops in place.
• not wobble around in the box.
• have the pops sticking out at varying heights.

It wasn’t a complete failure, but the Styrofoam (thus, the pops) kept wobbling in the box, and all the pops stood out the same height!

Lesson learned--- That cheap-ass Styrofoam ain’t worth it!
Lesson to learn--- Pick up the pace!!!