In honor of the Universal Pictures’ new Minions movie, our family decided to do something fun and create Minions cake pops. Between Baymax and Minions — I love them both equally. Minions remind me so much of my kids, especially when they’re with their little friends and you listen to them play. They are so cute!!! And I’m seriously going to miss their baby voices when they’re older, I better enjoy it while it lasts! I searched high and low for an easy recipe version and found there was a huge disconnect between me and these professional level recipes — my limited skills, limited baking tools, and limited time. We totally understand the working mom and busy family lifestyle, and we wouldn’t create something that we ourselves couldn’t create. And seriously, the pro versions I was finding would’ve taken me days or weeks to finish (not kidding) because they were so complex.
I decided to reach out to my lifeline and phoned a friend — life hack baking pro and good friend, Bess from Baked by the Besst here in Las Vegas to help me think outside the baking box to create uber cute Minion cake pops with limited skills, limited baking tools and limited time. The goal: to create an “easy button” version of these Minion cake pops that were literally so easy that even our kids could do it. The results were ah-mazing!!!
And so here goes…we baked, created, taste-tested and have pulled it all together in this easy-to-follow blog post guide. This cake pop how-to tutorial is perfect for a family night in or for some weekend fun with the kids.
Please note: these were a ton of fun to create, however, they still took a few hours because of freezing time and drying time. I know it doesn’t make sense now, but it will when you keep reading. You’ll want to carve out a total of 4-5 hours of baking, freezing, and creating. I promise you, it will be worth your while (and spending time with the kids are priceless) plus it’s super easy!
Minions Cake Pops Recipe (EASY VERSION)
Ingredients:
Cake Mix (flavor of your choice)
Frosting (flavor of your choice)
Blue and Yellow candy melts
Lollipop sticks (6-8in)
Candy eyeballs (By Wilton)
Black molding fondant
Parchment paper/Silpat/Foil (any)
Cake pop stand/styrofoam block
Stand mixer (optional)
*All of these products were found at Walmart in the baking section.
Directions:
Step 1: Mix the cake dough
Once you have baked your cake and let it cool entirely, crumble the cake into small pieces and get rid of any burnt or hard parts of cake while doing so and place it in a mixer bowl. The amount of frosting will vary on how dry or moist your cake turned out. The cake I made was quite moist to begin with, so I only ended up using about 3-4 tablespoons of frosting. Be careful not to add too much frosting or the cake dough will be difficult to mold.
With the mixer on the low setting (2-3), gradually add the frosting while checking the consistency of the cake dough. It should resemble a similar texture of cookie dough. (The smoother it looks, the better!)
-OR- by hand…
If you do not have a stand mixer, place the cake crumbs into a bowl and knead the cake into a dough like consistency while adding frosting gradually as needed.
Step 2: Mold
With the cake dough made, take a tablespoon and scoop a portion into your hand. Mold it into short/tall rounded cylinder shapes to resemble the minions. Once molded have them rest on a silpat/foil/parchment paper on top of a baking pan and place them in the freezer for 25-30 min.
Step 3: Prep
With the black fondant and the candy eyeballs, you can start to prep the minion’s hair, mouth, and goggles while your cake pops are freezing. I rolled out really thin pieces for the minion’s mouth and hair. For the goggles I just rolled out a thicker piece of fondant for to wrap around the eyes. If that seems too difficult, just roll a ball of fondant and place the eye on top of it and press down until you see the fondant on the edges of the eyes to resemble the goggles.
Step 4: Dip
Prep the candy melts into 2 separate bowls and microwave them until fully melted. If the candy melts are too thick add a small amount of shortening (crisco/vegetable oil) to thin the candy melts out. Take a lollipop stick and dip the tip into the yellow candy melts then stick it halfway into one of the cake doughs. Quickly dip it into the yellow melts and make sure the cake is completely coated. Shake of the excess chocolate by tapping it lightly on the edge of the bowl and set it on a cake pop stand/styrofoam block to dry. Repeat this step for the rest of the cake pops.
*If you experience cracks in your cake pops, don’t worry! Just take a little bit of yellow candy melts and patch the cracked area. Smooth the chocolate over with a clean finger to fill in the cracks and let dry.
Step 4: Decorate!
Once the yellow candy melts have dried, take the blue candy melts and coat the bottom half of the minion to make his overalls. To do this, I used another lollipop stick to trace a line and filled in the space with the blue candy melts. Use the yellow melts as a ‘glue’ to stick on your minion’s eyes, hair and mouth. Once decorated, let the cake pop dry on the stand/styrofoam block. Repeat this step for the rest of the minions and enjoy!
Ingredients
- Cake Mix (flavor of your choice)
- Frosting (flavor of your choice)
- Blue and Yellow candy melts
- Lollipop sticks (6-8in)
- Candy eyeballs (By Wilton)
- Black molding fondant
- Parchment paper/Silpat/Foil (any)
- Cake pop stand/styrofoam block
- Stand mixer (optional)
Instructions
- Step 1: Mix the cake dough
- Once you have baked your cake and let it cool entirely, crumble the cake into small pieces and get rid of any burnt or hard parts of cake while doing so and place it in a mixer bowl. The amount of frosting will vary on how dry or moist your cake turned out. The cake I made was quite moist to begin with, so I only ended up using about 3-4 tablespoons of frosting. Be careful not to add too much frosting or the cake dough will be difficult to mold.
- With the mixer on the low setting (2-3), gradually add the frosting while checking the consistency of the cake dough. It should resemble a similar texture of cookie dough. (The smoother it looks, the better!)
- -OR- by hand…
- If you do not have a stand mixer, place the cake crumbs into a bowl and knead the cake into a dough like consistency while adding frosting gradually as needed.
- Step 2: Mold
- With the cake dough made, take a tablespoon and scoop a portion into your hand. Mold it into short/tall rounded cylinder shapes to resemble the minions. Once molded have them rest on a silpat/foil/parchment paper on top of a baking pan and place them in the freezer for 25-30 min.
- Step 3: Prep
- With the black fondant and the candy eyeballs, you can start to prep the minion’s hair, mouth, and goggles while your cake pops are freezing. I rolled out really thin pieces for the minion’s mouth and hair. For the goggles I just rolled out a thicker piece of fondant for to wrap around the eyes. If that seems too difficult, just roll a ball of fondant and place the eye on top of it and press down until you see the fondant on the edges of the eyes to resemble the goggles.
- Step 4: Dip
- Prep the candy melts into 2 separate bowls and microwave them until fully melted. If the candy melts are too thick add a small amount of shortening (crisco/vegetable oil) to thin the candy melts out. Take a lollipop stick and dip the tip into the yellow candy melts then stick it halfway into one of the cake doughs. Quickly dip it into the yellow melts and make sure the cake is completely coated. Shake of the excess chocolate by tapping it lightly on the edge of the bowl and set it on a cake pop stand/styrofoam block to dry. Repeat this step for the rest of the cake pops.
- *If you experience cracks in your cake pops, don’t worry! Just take a little bit of yellow candy melts and patch the cracked area. Smooth the chocolate over with a clean finger to fill in the cracks and let dry.
- Step 4: Decorate!
- Once the yellow candy melts have dried, take the blue candy melts and coat the bottom half of the minion to make his overalls. To do this, I used another lollipop stick to trace a line and filled in the space with the blue candy melts. Use the yellow melts as a ‘glue’ to stick on your minion’s eyes, hair and mouth. Once decorated, let the cake pop dry on the stand/styrofoam block. Repeat this step for the rest of the minions and enjoy!
These are so cute. What a wonderful idea for a child’s party or even a special treat. Thank you for sharing these.
Oh that is too cute – I’m going to have to try making some minion cake pops too – thanks!