Peppa Pig Pops

I am a relative newcomer to blogs. The first blog I discovered was Bakerella after my husband showed me these amazing Sesame Street cake pops. I thought they were so cute and was really impressed by how simple yet effective the decoration was. I’ve had vague plans to make some ever since and bought her book as soon as it came out. Both the book and site are highly recommended and will give you lots of ideas.

It’s taken a lot longer than I thought it would but I finally got around to making some cake pops. Casper is a huge fan of Peppa Pig so that was the obvious choice. With his third birthday approaching I decided to make some for his party. As you can see he was very pleased with them and eager to help with the photos.

Casper helping with the photos

I thought it was worth talking through the stages I took to make these but I mostly followed the instructions from Bakerella.

You will also need a few supplies if you want to make some. I picked up a lot of it from Hobbycraft but candy melts are really popular and sell out quickly so it’s worth planning well in advance.

• Polystyrene foam (this is a lot, but was the cheapest way to get it. I only used about a tenth of it)
• Lollipop sticks (15cm ones work well)
• Candy melts (these are not proper chocolate so don’t need tempering and set really quickly)
• Candy eyes (I got these from Hobbycraft for £2.50 but can’t find them on their site. For a cheaper option you could pipe royal icing instead or if you can find little while circular sprinkles these would work too)
• Edible ink pens (to be honest the ones I used didn’t work well at all, but I think some brands are better than others)

Once you’ve got everything you need you can start…

Make the cake and icing – do this first as you need to let the cake cool completely before you can crumble it. I made a chocolate sponge cake and chocolate butter icing. I used standard victoria sponge ratios for the cake (substituting cocoa powder for some of the flour). I did add a bit more flour/cocoa though to make the cake a bit firmer and easier to crumble. I also made sure it was completely cooked through.

Crumble the cake – I left the cake to cool completely and found it crumbled really easily between my fingers.

Mix in the icing – you want to use just the right amount of icing so the mix comes together but without making it too moist. I’d guess that I used about 200g of icing for a 3 egg cake mix. Press it together with the back of a large spoon.

Crumble the cake, add icing and mix

Make the mix into balls – roll balls of mix and refrigerate for a few hours (or put in the freezer for about 15 minutes). I actually weighed my balls as I made them to keep sizes consistent. I used 38g for Daddy and Mummy Pig and 32g for Peppa and George. I think they are a good size but the larger ones were maybe a bit too heavy for dipping.

Shape and refrigerate again – I actually found moulding the balls into pig shapes the most time consuming stage so you’d make things a lot quicker if you choose a character with a round head. Do a few at a time keeping the others in the fridge. You need to refrigerate them again once you’ve finished

Make ears – I just melted some of the pink candy melts and piped out some ears. I did a few different sizes as I wasn’t quite sure what size the heads would be and I also wanted to do the whole of Peppa’s family.

Put the lollipop sticks in – this is much more successful if the cake ball is very cold so be patient. Dip the top of the stick in some melted candy melts and push about half way into the cake ball.

Roll, shape, pipe ears and insert lollipop sticks

Dip the cake pops – this bit wasn’t quite as successful as I’d hoped. The candy melts seemed a bit too thick. I tried to thin them with vegetable shortening but it didn’t mix in very well so on some of the dipped cake pops there was a separating effect. To be honest I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue but once you add the other details they will look a lot better.

Dip in candy melts

Decorate – add eyes and ears by dabbing a bit of melted candy melts on and holding until they are secure. Use edible ink pens, writing icing or royal icing to add other features.

Already looking better after adding the eyes

And now for the family portrait

Peppa, Mummy, Daddy and George

Overall I was really pleased with how they turned out and would definitely make them again. They also complemented Casper’s birthday cake perfectly, which was made by my talented mum.

Casper’s Peppa and George pirate birthday cake