Halloween goes Poop

Earlier this week I attended a Halloween cake pop course with the British Queen of the cake pops, Molly Bakes.

We learned step by step how to make the perfect pops. From rolling and shaping to insider tips about how experts coat their pops and ensure their balls don't roll down the sticks we learned it all. I was chuffed that none of my balls ended up at the bottom of the candy melt pool as has happened to me at home.

We also got tips about making decorations for the pops - this part was very hands on for me as I was crap at making the teeny tiny bits like devil horns. Molly was great at showing me one on one how to do the sugarpaste bits and I now know when it comes to sugarpaste cornflour is my friend. My witches hat still turned out a bit wonky but I think she looks suitably menacing even with a bit of a larger than necessary hat.

Next up we piped candy onto the pops that required it, for example the zombies which required extra blood and the mummies who needed mummifying.

Then came the bit I feared the most - painting directly onto the pops. With a brush and paints. Christ on a bike. I am crap at any kind of painting unless its my nails but I think I did okay(ish). The fact that they're Halloween so things can look a bit special helped I think.

We did eyeballs....

I have a phobia about eyeballs and even painting this made me a little queasy.

Then we did pumpkins - mine kinda looks like it was carved by someone with a bit of a blunt knife.

Next up was a spooky black cat - which I think looks quite cute...you can't see her pink nose in the pic but it was there!

One of my favourite things was learning how to make the ghost shaped pops - I loved the way we learned to shape them and shall be making more ghosts in the future as they were relatively simple to do and one of the easier pops to paint.

My devil isn't that scary - he reminds of the Devil from the Satan is Real album cover.

One of my favourite things to make was Molly's infamous 'shits on a stick', or poop pops if you're a little more ladylike. They were the ones Manny went for straight away and he loved them. Perfect for a Halloween party.

I'm quite proud of what I made as my previous attempts at cake pops were rather lame. And now I know some insider tricks I shall definitely be attempting some of the ideas from Molly's book, Cake Pops. I got it months ago and have had several ideas bookmarked but not gotten round to them. I shall be popping lots more now.

You can view Molly's class schedule here and you can visit Molly's stall at Netil Market on Saturdays to buy her cakes, or her cake pops from Selfridges. The class was lots of fun and I came home with a huge box of cake pops and lots of great hints and tips.

As is tradition I'm including links to some suitably gory Halloween vids/songs with my Halloween posts - today it's Holland's finest Rompeprop with their classic We Want Gore (possibly not safe for work!). Enjoy \m/