Graduation Pops

This is a story about my first attempt at trying to be Bakerella.

SIL M2 (not to be mistaken for SIL M) recently entered the next stage of adulthood by graduating high school. Not only did she receive her diploma, but she also obtained a Lifetime Member of the California Scholarship Federation award for her academic success. We were all very proud of her accomplishments and honored her achievements with a super fun graduation party.

I was in charge of the favors and centerpieces, so I took to the internet to copy other more creative people's ideas so I can look crafty find inspiration.

Enter Bakerella.

She is the queen of easy and creative baking! Her tutorials make baking amateurs like me hopeful to complete a project with minimal aggravation.

I happened upon these babies many moons ago and saved the post on my Google Reader. I knew I would make these someday, and that day had finally come:

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Cute, right?! And seemingly easy to make! I had to make 60 of them and was ready to take on the challenge.

Note: the following tutorial is available on Bakerella's site with prettier pictures, but here's my attempt at it.

What you need:

- Mini Reese's cups (each bag comes with about 40 mini cups)

- Ghirardella squares in any flavor besides dark chocolate to match the peanut butter cups (Bakerella used Godiva chocolates, but I had a hard time finding the right kind.. Ghirardelli worked just fine for me)

- Xtreme Air Heads (these are hard to find. I had to get mine from a gas station)

- Chocolate Melts

- Lollipop sticks

1. Put your bags of mini Reese's cups in the freezer for a few minutes to cool. This will make it easier for you to remove the wrapper without causing damage to the chocolate.

2. Take the Reese's cups out of the freezer and start unwrapping! Place them on wax paper (or sealable plastic wrap, like I did) and allow them to get back to room temperature. Don't be discouraged if freezing the cups didn't help that much and you end up with cups that have peanut butter showing. Now, Bakerella suggests tossing or eating any messed-up cups (like the ones below), but I ended up messing up too many, so I used them anyway. No one will notice the difference, right?

3. While you're waiting for the cups to reach room temperature, heat up some chocolates melts according to the instructions on the bag. You will use this as your "glue".

4. Once the cups are about room temperate, dip your lollipop stick in the melted chocolate and insert the stick into the cup. Repeat until you have something like this:

5. While you're waiting for the cups with sticks to dry, you can start working on the top part of the graduation cap. Unwrap all the Ghirardelli squares and lay them on wax paper.

6. Cut apart the Xtreme Air Heads (I found scissors very helpful for this part) to your desired color for the tassel. SIL M2's school colors were orange and black, so I used the orange part of the candy. (Matthew and I enjoyed eating the scraps) Divide the single-colored strips to your desired length (I divided them in thirds). These strips will be used as the cap's tassel.

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7. Take a tooth pick and apply a thin strip of your melted chocolate glue on a Ghiradelli squares in the area you want your tassel to go. Carefully place your tassel on the melted chocolate and allow it to cool. I folded the tassel underneath the square to create a bend.

8. Add a tiny drop of melted chocolate in the middle of the cap and allow it to cool

9. Once the caps and cups have cooled, use the melted chocolate to glue the two together!

The lollipops should be done within the next few minutes. Since I was giving these out as favors, I wrapped them with a favor bag and tied a matching ribbon around the lollipops. I also created labels, printed them out on cardstock and used a 2" circle puncher to cut them out.

Here's a picture of the final product:

Note: This lollipop is about 3 weeks old and the picture was just taken yesterday, but I realized I never took a picture of the final product! Trust me when I say they looked waaaay better the day of the party.

All crappy pictures were taken by me unless noted otherwise