Jolly Rancher's Rock Cake Pops — The Dollar Store Girl

Are these to eat or to look at?

It's true that before I eat my creations, I stare at them. Sometimes they just look so cool that eating it would just ruin everything. But of course, eventually I eat it all up! I love to make my creations as colourful as I can, which is why I chose to buy Jolly Rancher's at Dollarama and crush them up. They shimmer in the light!

Cake pops are one of my favourite desserts to make because there are endless ways to decorate them. You can literally make them into anything, and that is what I love about them!

When I saw those Jolly Rancher's, I immediately thought of crushing them up and thinking to myself, "wow, this is going to be super colourful!".

That is how this recipe came to be.

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I will show you exactly how I made them but just know that these do take some time because of all the steps. It's worth it in the end because they look dynamite!

How to make cake pops

Cake pops are basically cake and icing mixed together. But there is a little more to it. I outline the steps below.

1. Buy any cake mix flavour you like

The dollar store is always stocked on cake mix and this time I picked up a chocolate flavoured mix from dollar tree. You can choose absolutely any flavour of cake mix that the dollar store has stored.

Pick up jolly ranchers and Betty Crocker's Whipped cream in both vanilla and chocolate. Use the chocolate for mixing into the cake mix and the vanilla for the outer coating.

Bake your cake. Let cool, scrap it with a fork and add your icing.

After you mix in the icing, your cake mix will look like this.

The trick with mastering the texture is to add the icing gradually. I ended up using the entire can of icing and you'll know if it's the right consistency when you can mould it easily into a ball form.

2. Dip your sticks and place in fridge

For my sticks, I used paper straws. They were very sturdy and unbendable. I needed something similar to actual cake pop sticks since I couldn't find any at the dollar stores. And they also provided extra prettiness with its nice design.

The straws were first dipped into the icing then pierced more than half way through the cake pop.

Once all your cake pops have been pierced with their straws, you can now put them into the refrigerator for about 15 minutes or so. This helps to solidify the cake ball and make it easier to apply the icing later on.

3. Crush up your candies

While your cake pops are in the refrigerator, use this time to crush up your jolly ranchers. I choose to crush them by individual colour because I like to be selective.

At the beginning I tried using the garlic masher method but I quickly learned that that was never going to work. So I went the noisy route and used a kitchen hammer and hit it as hard as I could. It's great for releasing any frustrations!

I placed all the different colours into separate sandwich bags. Here is what they looked like afterwards.

4. Time for Dippin'

For some, this part might be fun and exciting, maybe even mess free. Nope. It was not like that for me. Beautiful food is never easy and this one is no exception. It wasn't as if it was a disaster but I want to be as real as possible. Apparently when you leave jolly rangers out in small bowls for a short while, they tend to stick together. Solution: break it up with a spoon.

Some cake pops were multi-coloured because why not? It's vibrant and happy. I also was selective with a couple pops by just choosing one or two colours. And it looked really good!

Here is what they transformed into.