Cake pop recipes all run on the same four moves, which is the best news in this whole post: bake a cake, crumble it, bind the crumbs with frosting until they feel like clay, then roll, chill and dip. When people ask me to bring dessert they ask for my chocolate chip cookies with the cut-up candy bars in them, so I will be straight with you, cake pops are not my signature. They are, however, the thing that vanishes first at a party, because nobody has to cut a slice or hunt for a fork. Below you will find funfetti, truffle stuffed brownie pops, pina colada, churro, pumpkin spice, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and a grain free version, plus flower bouquets for the days when the decorating is the entire point. Most start with a box mix and a bag of candy melts.
1. Funfetti Cake Pops
Two choices make or break a funfetti pop and both of them are here. Use a light colored cake mix and a light frosting so nothing shadows through the white candy coating, and cut back the oil in the cake so the balls do not turn greasy on you. Crumble fine, trim off any crusty edges, then add frosting a little at a time until the crumbs hold together like clay. Rainbow nonpareils handle the rest.
Get the full tutorial at Hungry Happenings.
2. Truffle Stuffed Brownie Pops
A truffle inside a brownie, dipped in chocolate and set on a stick. The truffle is nothing more than equal parts chocolate and heavy cream, melted smooth; it chills up hard and you scoop little balls out of it. Use about two tablespoons of crumbled brownie per pop, half underneath and half on top, then seal the seam with your hands and roll it round. Chill thirty minutes before dipping so the coating sets clean instead of sliding off.
Get the full tutorial at Crazy for Crust.
3. Flower Bouquet Cake Pops
Here the cake pop is its own bouquet, so there is no vase to find and nothing to wilt by Sunday. Start with plain cake balls, crumbled cake mixed with frosting, then build the flower on the outside: candies for petals, a flower cookie cutter to shape the dough, a mold, fondant details or a piped swirl on top. A cupcake wrapper slipped underneath acts as the backer. Group them and add a tag for Mother’s Day.
Get the full tutorial at Bakerella.
4. Pina Colada Cake Pops
This is the one to read even if you never make it, because the maker spent years solving pops that slide off the stick and the fix is a dough with no frosting in it at all. Leave the oil out of the cake, bake at 325 for 25 to 28 minutes, then cover the hot pan with foil to sweat it, wrap it and leave it overnight. Quartered maraschino cherries and pineapple flavoring go in the batter.
Get the full tutorial at Lady Behind the Curtain.
5. Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops
No stick required on these, because a mini ice cream cone is the handle. Stuff the cones with some of the cake mixture, glue a cake ball on top with melted candy melts, then dip and finish with a dark chocolate Promise and a red button candy so it reads as a scoop with a cherry. Fifteen cones from one box of cake mix and half a can of frosting, about thirty minutes start to finish.
Get the full tutorial at Love Bakes Good Cakes.
6. German Chocolate Cake Pops
Bake the cake dry on purpose. That is the trick here, and it sounds wrong until you realize a dry crumb lets you fold in far more of the coconut pecan frosting, which is the whole reason anybody wants German chocolate in the first place. Toast the coconut in a dry pan over low heat, stirring the entire time, because it turns in seconds. Canned frosting is fine and the maker prefers it.
Get the full tutorial at Moms and Munchkins.
7. Triple Chocolate Cake Pops
Chocolate cake mashed into chocolate frosting tastes almost exactly like soft, decadent fudge, which is the discovery hiding inside this one. Dip in chocolate, drizzle with more chocolate, and you have counted to three without doing anything difficult. If your dough feels loose, chill it before you roll, because warm dough cracks around the stick and then the pop takes a swim in the melting pot.
Get the full tutorial at Oh Sweet Day.
8. Green Velvet Cake Pops
Everybody knows red velvet, so the fun of this one is entirely in the moment somebody bites through a plain white shell and finds vivid green underneath. The maker splits the job over two days, baking and chilling the cake wrapped in plastic first, which makes a fussy project feel like nothing. Canned frosting instead of homemade cream cheese is a deliberate call here, so the finished pops are shelf stable.
Get the full tutorial at Love From the Oven.
9. Strawberry Shortcake Cake Pops
Pound cake is the base here rather than a box mix, and that changes the handling. Add about three quarters of the frosting first, then the rest a spoonful at a time until the mixture holds like soft playdough. Chill thirty minutes before you shape, and freeze the shaped pops before dipping so they keep their edges. Angel food or sponge will work if that is what you have, they just drink more frosting.
Get the full tutorial at Life Love Liz.
10. Cinnamon Roll Cake Pops
Fifteen minutes, two ingredients, and one of them is a tube of refrigerated cinnamon rolls. Stack two rolls with the cinnamon side facing in, cut the stack in quarters, drop a quarter into each well of a greased cake pop pan and bake about ten minutes at 350. The icing that comes in the tube goes into a small squeeze bottle for decorating. Breakfast on a stick, and brunch guests lose their minds.
Get the full tutorial at A Night Owl.
11. Easy Brownie Cake Pops
Brownies skip the entire crumble and frosting step, because a fudgy brownie already holds together in a ball on its own. That makes this the shortest path to a cake pop in the whole roundup: bake a family size box, cool, roll, dip. A spoonful of shortening stirred into the melted chocolate thins the coating so it flows instead of clumping. They keep for days in the fridge.
Get the full tutorial at Barbara Bakes.
12. Mint Chocolate Cake Pops
The maker tried tinting the cake green to mimic mint chocolate chip, decided it looked frankly awful, and went chocolate instead, which is a small honesty worth having in a recipe. Inside is a minty chocolate cake with mini chips through it, built on buttermilk and strong black coffee. Outside is dark coating chocolate with light green white chocolate piped over the top. The coffee is there for depth, not flavor.
Get the full tutorial at Sprinkles for Breakfast.
13. Easy Cake Pops
If you want the plain, no theme, works for any party version, this is it. One box of cake mix, about three quarters of a can of frosting, 24 ounces of candy coating and 40 lollipop sticks. Roll ping pong sized balls, freeze thirty minutes, melt the coating in thirty second bursts, then dip the tip of each stick in coating before pushing it into a ball so it anchors. Color the coating to match anything.
Get the full tutorial at Kara's Party Ideas.
14. Easy Pumpkin Cake Pops
Four ingredients, and one of them is a can. Spice cake mix and pure pumpkin make the cake, cream cheese frosting binds the crumbs, white chocolate chips coat the outside, and fall sprinkles are optional but obviously not really. Read the can label twice, because pure pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling are not the same thing and the filling will throw the sugar off. Makes 24.
Get the full tutorial at Dizzy Busy and Hungry.
15. Churro Cake Pops
Cinnamon goes in twice here, which is what makes it read as a churro rather than a cinnamon cake. Two tablespoons of it sift into the cake batter with the flour and baking powder, and another two tablespoons beat into the frosting at the end. The cake is baked flat on a cookie sheet at 350 for 15 to 18 minutes, so it cools fast. Greek yogurt in the batter keeps the crumb from going dry.
Get the full tutorial at Wheel N Deal Mama.
16. Ice Cream Cake Pops
The maker’s own promise on these is the best sentence in the roundup: they are meant to look badly made, because a lopsided drip reads as melting ice cream. So if cake pops intimidate you, start here, where a mess is the design. Use a dry sponge rather than a rich, moist one, and add the buttercream a spoonful at a time. The tutorial is written in Spanish and the photos carry the method.
Get the full tutorial at Dulce Sentimiento.
17. Chili Pepper Cake Pops
A teaspoon of cayenne stirred into chocolate cake pop dough is all the heat you need, and chocolate and chili have always belonged together. The shaping is where it gets fiddly: push the stick all the way through so the tip pokes out as the stem, and expect the dough to crack, so press it back around the stick and make sure it is secure before dipping. Red candy melts, then green for the stem.
Get the full tutorial at Pint Sized Baker.
18. Pecan Pumpkin Spice Cake Pops
Skip the sticks and these become cake balls, which is a genuinely useful thing to know when you are making dessert for forty and cannot face inserting forty sticks. The maker bakes from scratch for everything else and uses store bought cake mix and canned frosting for cake pops specifically, because the result is the same and the afternoon is shorter. Pecans and pumpkin spice make it read as fall.
Get the full tutorial at Hello Little Home.
19. Snow Cone Cake Pops
No baking and no cake mix on this one. A Little Debbie snack cake is mashed whole, frosting and all, until it binds, then rolled, chilled hard and dipped in white candy coating. Pour colored sugar sprinkles over while the coating is wet so the shell reads as shaved ice, and wrap a half circle of white paper around the bottom for the cone. Twelve of them in fifty minutes, and kids recognize the shape before they know what is inside.
Get the full tutorial at Party Pinching.
20. Peanut Butter Cookie Balls
No cake, no oven, and about forty of them from one package of cookies. Crush a 16 ounce package of Oreos to fine crumbs, mix in 5 ounces of softened cream cheese and 3 tablespoons of creamy peanut butter, then roll one inch balls. Dip in melted semi sweet, drizzle with melted peanut butter chips from a snipped bag, add sticks and chill about an hour until firm. Keep them in the fridge.
Get the full tutorial at The TomKat Studio.
21. Vanilla Latte Coffee Cake Balls
Coffee and cake in one bite, which makes these the rare dessert that belongs on a brunch table at ten in the morning. The binder here is cream cheese rather than frosting, so they set firmer and taste less sweet than a standard cake ball. Bake a coffee cake with ground coffee and a tablespoon of latte concentrate in the batter, crumble it, mix it with a package of cream cheese and roll. Fifteen minutes in the freezer, dip in white chocolate melts, then an hour more to set.
Get the full tutorial at The Southern Thing.
22. Grain-Free, Refined-Sugar-Free Cake Pops
Coconut butter is what holds these together, and it is also why they taste faintly of coconut, which the maker says up front rather than letting you find out. Two versions come out of the same method, maple pumpkin and chocolate dipped. If you have a food processor or a high powered blender you can make your own coconut butter from bulk shredded coconut for a couple of dollars, against eight to fifteen for a jar.
Get the full tutorial at GNOWFGLINS.
23. Cookies and Cream Cake Pops
Measurements make this one easy to hit: 4 cups of crumbled vanilla cake, 1 cup of finely crushed Oreos with a quarter cup held back for the tops, and half a cup of vanilla buttercream. Chill the mixture an hour, scoop with a melon baller so they come out matched, then dip in semi sweet and half dip in white. The reserved crumbs go on while the coating is wet.
Get the full tutorial at I Scream for Buttercream.
24. Little Debbie Cake Pops
Two ingredients, twelve minutes, and the secret ingredient is Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies. Blend twelve of them with a hand mixer until the cookie and the cream come together into a dough, roll one inch balls, push in sticks and chill ten minutes. Dip in melted white chocolate, scraping off the excess so the shell stays thin, then garnish with extra cookie crumbs. Makes twelve, and nobody guesses.
Get the full tutorial at Six Sisters' Stuff.
25. Caramel Apple Cake Pops
Forty eight pops from one 13 by 9 cake, and the apple shape comes from pressing your finger into the top of each ball before it chills. Read that chilling step twice: cold dough dips cleanly, and room temperature dough falls apart in the melting pot, which is how a batch goes wrong. Green candy melts for the apple, caramel colored melts for the drip, dark chocolate and nonpareils on top.
Get the full tutorial at Lauren Conrad.
26. Cream Cheese Carrot Cake Cake Pops
Homemade carrot cake crumbled straight into homemade cream cheese frosting, and the maker’s one firm instruction is to keep mixing until there is not a single streak of frosting left in the dough. Almond bark rather than candy melts for the shell, because it does not seize up and go thick on you. They last five to seven days in the fridge, and ten minutes on the counter softens the shell again.
Get the full tutorial at Cookie Dough and Oven Mitt.
