Attack of the Zombie Cake Pops!

I love being a crafty mom.  But every once in a while, a project comes along that is completely over my head.  It's always something that seems easy, but just blows up right in my face.  And one of those things is cake pops.  They look SO easy, and I've seen a million tutorials on Pinterest.  And of course, all of the tutorials have perfectly crafted cake pops that are now STARING INTO MY SOUL.  And they're mocking me.

It seemed so easy!  I had a kit with instructions and everything! They're Gingerbread Cake Pops that my hubby's aunt got for us.  Knight has been bugging me for days to make them.  Dragon, of course, just wanted the end result.  We had some free time today, so I decided to have some mommy/son time and make them with Knight.  Here's the box:

Simple, right?

It had the cake mix, icing mix, the sticks, the stands, the candy melts, and an adorable little gingerbread man cookie cutter.  At first it all seemed so easy... too easy.  We mixed up the cake, baked it, let it cool, mixed it with icing, and rolled it out.  Then we stamped out 20 little gingerbread men and popped them in the freezer (apparently this is to make them easier to handle. LIES.)

I melted the candy to a smooth consistency, and then I was ready to dip!  The instructions said to dip each stick in the candy melts, then place them "as shown" into the gingerbread men.  This is where it got awkward.    It took awhile, but finally I had a bunch of seemingly incontinent gingerbread men all perched up on their little sticks.

I'm pretty sure there's a cream for that.

Then came the fun part.  Dipping our little army of gingerbread men into the bowl of melted candy.  Sadly, we lost the first one.  And the second.  The third one lived, but sadly, he would never be the same as well.  Unfortunately, we had several of what I'd like to call "training casualties."

R.I.P., my brave little men

And then we lost some in the field:

Oh noez!

And the ones that were left were... different.  Entire arms and legs uncovered by candy.  Extremities and heads broken off.  In short, ZOMBIES.  Cake pops of the undead.  So I took the included icing and candy sprinkles and went to town.  This was the horrifying result.

Uuuurrrrggghhhh.

I let Knight decorate the rest by himself, which means that they all pretty much looked like zombies too.

Behold my undead army!

Most of the poor little zombies got eaten throughout the day (What? They had it coming.) By the way, no matter what they look like, they were DELICIOUS.  Knight and I had a wonderful time making them, Dragon had a wonderful time eating them, and hilarity reigned in our little kingdom.  Therefore, I'm calling this one a solid...

Have a great weekend!

Love, Leigh