Cake Pops…Shaken, Not Stirred.

My friends from college got married this past weekend, and I made cake pops for the reception. They had a very New York wedding: a beautiful ceremony in Central Park followed by a cocktail party reception at a Manhattan bar spot. Immediately, I had the idea to serve the cake pops in giant martini glasses. A little later I realized I could make the cake pops to look like martini olives. The end result looked pretty cool, and very appropriate for a cocktail party.

Since my fairytale cake pops were such a hit a few months ago, I decided to also make these red velvet with buttercream frosting. For a full tutorial on cake pops, see my post on the bridal shower cake pops I made in December. To get the shape, I just rolled the cake and frosting mixture into a ball, and used one of my fondant shaping tools to make a hole-shaped indentation in one side of the pop.

I dipped the pops in Merckens melts, and used a mixture of green and yellow to get that olive green shade. I used 1 cup of dark green and 1/4 cup of yellow. To get the chocolate to a dipping consistency, I added some Crisco when microwaving the chocolate. I used about 1-2 teaspoons per 1 1/4 cups of chocolate. I actually microwaved the colors separately and mixed after they were both melted. I did have some trouble with the yellow melts becoming smooth, but adding the Crisco really helped. I microwaved the chocolate for 30-second intervals at 50% power for the green and 15-second intervals at 50% power for the yellow (since it was only 1/4 cup). I just started with this, and kept melting more batches of chocolate as I needed. I  covered roughly 15-18 pops with each batch.
After dipping each pop twice and tapping off the excess chocolate, I took a steak knife and gently popped the chocolate covering the indentation in the middle of the pop. This resulted in a recess where I could then place my pimento (aka red marshmallow fondant).

For the fondant, I just took small pieces and tapered off the ends. You only need a little fondant for each pop, but you want to make sure to plug up the hole since the cake is exposed. I dipped the tapered end in red royal icing and placed it inside the hole. I then pressed the fondant with my thumb onto the pop, so the hole was completely covered.

And then you have an olive!

The last thing I did was make some white fondant to place in the bottom of the glass. This allowed me to place the pops safely in the glass and not have them all move when people took one pop out. I wanted to make the bottom of the glass shimmery, so I added some pearl luster dust to my fondant, and also placed metallic shreds on the very bottom of the glass and also on top of the fondant. The pearl luster is subtle, but gives a nice effect.

*** I need to give a shout out to Melanie for giving me the idea of using fondant ( I was originally going to use clay) and especially for the idea of using luster dust for the shimmer. At first I was going to spray the glass with edible pearl paint, but Melanie warned me that the oil based paint may streak and that luster dust was the way to go. THANK YOU SO MUCH! It worked out great and I was able to keep everything edible, which is always good.

I made 100 cake pops, and served them in 4 martini glasses. Here they are right after I set them up.

And here they are on the dessert table at the reception!