Cupcake Push Pops

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Hello…It’s me again, Casharina, bringing you another fun and hopefully inspiring food creation post, using trendy push pop containers.  Today I’ll be showing you where to purchase these cute little throwbacks, as well as how to make them snazzy and give you a host of ideas on what to place in them to make them a special treat for whatever the occasion. For my portion I will be showing you how I make cupcake push pops.  (And, don’t forget to keep scrolling past my post for the latest on PROJECT SCRAP!)

Before you begin you’ll have to purchase a set of push pop containers.  There are a variety of vendors that sell push pop containers including HERE, where you can purchase them in sets of 12, 24, or 100 counts, with lids.  Although they are a little pricey, if you plan to re-use them, it helps make them a little more reasonable.  I chose to partner up with one of my friends and purchase the 100 pack making them right around .75 cents each including shipping, and I have now taken them to Kaytlynn’s classroom three times and used them at two birthday parties. 

*Although the containers are NOT dishwasher safe, they ARE easy to wash by hand.  I always take a box with me and ask for the guest to place the empty container back into the box, it’s worked so far!

Push Pop Ingredients:

• A cake mix and the ingredients necessary to bake the cake (You may also choose to use a brownie mix!)
• Icing
• Food coloring (optional)
• Sprinkles or other candies (optional – for mine I’m using Christmas colored M&M’s)

For the digital designs:

• Scalloped hole puncher (optional)
• Digital papers (I used the Shabby Shoppe kits Believe and Joyful to create my labels)
• Tape

Let’s get started!

• Mix your cake according to package directions.  Instead of baking cake in a cake pan, pour the batter onto a cookie sheet.
• Test the batter…I know, I know…it has eggs, but I was raised eating, I mean testing the batter, and I have lived to share that tradition with my girls!
• After the cake is cool, use the top of one of the containers to “punch” out as many circles as you can.  This will be the layers in your cupcake pop.
• Prepare your icing by placing it into a pastry bag OR Ziploc bag and snipping a SMALL hole in the corner to help with piping the icing into the containers.

Tip: If you are coloring the icing you should do so before placing it into the bag.  If you are using more than one color, you should separate the icing into equal parts and add the food coloring, I like to use mugs to mix my colors up, they’re small and easy to load in the dishwasher.  Then you just add each color to a piping bag or Ziploc, your choice.  To fill the Ziploc bag, place it into a mug and fold the outer edges around it like you do a trashsack, it makes for a much easier way to fill it! ;)

 Assembly:

You’re now ready to assemble your cupcake push pops. First you will need to assemble your push pop containers.  Then you will begin filling them.

 I like to place one cupcake piece on the bottom of the container, and then alternate with icing, then another cupcake bite, and more icing. You can add sprinkles between each layer if you’d like or you can choose to just alternate between icing each time…after placing 3 cupcake bites into each container, layered with icing you should have it full enough to garnish the top with sprinkles (optional) and then place the lid on tight.  If you choose to bake in a mini muffin tin, then you will probably only need 2 mini cupcakes per container…just fill it ’til it’s nice and full!

 Now, I have read that some people leave the stick off for transporting the containers…I did this…it was a MAJOR failure…although it was much easier to carry the containers, when we tried to add the stick it was just pushing the cupcakes up and out of the containers, so I would NOT recommend waiting until after they are assembled to add the sticks! ;)

 To travel with mine, I have just placed them upright in a box, tight enough that they held each other up…I also placed them in the refrigerator this way. There are a variety of ways you can display Push Pop containers.  For instance, use an old shoe box, pop holes in the top, decorate with wrapping paper and place the pops into the box.  You can also use a block of flower foam by simply sticking in the pops after decorating the outer portion of the foam.

 Now to make them snazzy:

 Of course I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I cannot let something that I’ve created go bare…that is without some kind of personalization on them, showing that they are made for “this” occasion.  Well I’ve done it again.  This time I decided that I would make labels for each child with their picture on it.  I created these labels just like I did my candy bar wrappers from my last hybrid post, only I resized the label to fit my needs.  I have also used a round scalloped punch to simply place a label on the top of the container.

 There are a number of different ways to fill the containers including, making cinnamon roll bites layered with butter cream icing, simply filling them with colorful candies to match a theme, and as I’ve scoured the internet I’ve even seen a few holiday themed designs using donuts to make snowmen and carrot cake and frosting to make carrots for Easter…there are so many possibilities, I can see these being trendy forever! ;)

I hope you’ve enjoyed my post…but that’s not all for today!!  Keep scrolling down…SP is here with her NOVEMBER projectSCRAP check-in and Kylie is sharing the new DECEMBER projectSCRAP templates for you to download!

CasharinaFood Stuff, Uncategorized 3 Comments