Valentine Bears

For Valentine's Day, my mother and I made up an army of these little guys.

Aren't they ADORABLE? Okay, they look very similar to the Derangedeers I made for Christmas, but are a little less crazy in the eyes.

These were made using Bakerella's cake pop recipe. Notice that these aren't pops. They started out as pops but were too heavy. The chocolate started cracking under the pressure. Here's a basic materials list and rundown on the assembly once you've reached the ball rolling phase:

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Chocolate Melts
Brown M&M's or Reese's Pieces (paws and cut in half for ears)
Pearl Mints (eyes) (I don't know what these are actually called but they were in the wedding supply aisle of Wal-Mart
Strawberry Daiquiri Jelly Belly's (cut in half for noses)
Candy Hearts
Edible Ink Pen



1. Roll cake/frosting mixture into two sizes of balls, one for the head and one for the body.  Use your thumb to make an indent in the tops of the bigger ones.

2. Place balls on wax paper covered pan and freeze for 30 minutes to an hour to firm them up.


3. Melt some chocolate (I used chocolate melts of the bulk candy variety mixed with some melted butter) Take cake out of freezer. Push lollipop stick all the way through a bigger ball making sure the indentation is on top.

4. Spoon a little melted chocolate into the indentation and push a smaller ball on top. Don't push the stick all the way through the head. Move the body ball up if you need to. The chocolate should dry pretty fast but you can put them in the fridge or freezer for a minute to speed it up. This should bond the body and head together pretty well.

5. Once the body and head are secure, roll them in some melted chocolate until they are fully coated. Turn bear to let excess drip off.

6. You can attach the eyes, ears, noses, heart and feet before they dry if you're super quick, but I did if after each bear dried using a dab of melted chocolate to attach them.

7. This is where you'll notice your bears might be cracking. If this happens, or you want to avoid it happening, remove the sticks in a twisting motion as not to crack the chocolate.

I feel like I'm forgetting to mention something, but this will at least give you an idea of what to do if that's the case.

My Take on Bakerella's Christmas Cake Pops

So when I saw these things on her site, I thought "Golly gee, those are adorable." I immediately wanted to make them. Sadly, the process was not as easily as I would have liked and, well, my results are lacking.

Let's do a comparison:

Here are her versions:

Cute, right? Look at those Rudolph's! LOOK AT THEM!

And here are my sad little versions:

Okay, my trees aren't so bad. They don't have stars because I couldn't find any, and they don't have the great texture because I couldn't do it without mangling the whole thing.

But that reindeer. That is one entirely deranged animal. Where did I go wrong? Well, the eyes are candy coated sunflower seeds which are all different shapes and sizes and lent perfectly to the crazy eyes. I honestly couldn't find anything better to use for the eyes. Aside from that, I was sawing down a bunch of mini pretzels trying to get antler shapes because I couldn't find those nifty alphabet pretzels. And finally, I'm just plain terrible at working with candy melts, or any sort of melted object and what has resulted from this is a herd of reindeer with apparent skin conditions. Ah well.

To see how to make these and all sorts of other ridiculous cute edibles, go here.

Merry almost-Christmas to you all!