Trick or Treat?

Little did I realize a couple weeks ago, when I decided I'd make my class cake pops, what a trick it would be.  Or the mess.  Or the frustration.  Or, the expense.  I must have been crazy, truly, to think that making cake pops for 27 would be, well, a piece of cake.  Not.

I made the cake on Sunday ($ 0.99).  I crumbled it up and added the frosting ($ 1.29) on Monday, and attempted to form nice little round balls of sticky cake.  Messy, very messy.  I melted white chocolate  ($2.59) and dipped the little white stick in ($1.99), and stuck it in the little round sticky balls of cake.  About half of them crumbled on the cookie sheet.  I fixed them and put them in the freezer to "set".

Meanwhile, I melted orange candy melts ($2.99) in the microwave.  I waited patiently for my 20 minutes to be up for the cake balls to "set" then dipped the first one in the melted candy.

It broke apart and I had to fish it's pieces out of the bowl with a spoon.

I crammed it back together (I think the melted candy kind of helped it hold its shape) and put them all back in the freezer and decided to leave them there until this morning.

Mostly awake at 5:15 AM, I began melting the candy (again) while I read the paper.  Once it was melted, I tried dipping again with greater success.  I liberally coated the dipped cake balls with sprinkles ($2.99) these are for fifth graders after all! and poked them into the rather expensive chunks of styrofoam I bought for just this purpose (3 @ $3.99 each) to dry.

Luckily, I had also bought a bag of yellow candy melts ($2.99) as I soon realized that the bag of orange wasn't enough to cover all of the cake pops.  For some strange reason, the yellow candy seemed thicker, and those cake balls are fatter than the orange ones. Oh well.

I finished clearing the melted candy off the counter, swept up the spilled sprinkles, and put the finished cake pops in the fridge to harden around 7:00 AM.  Then it was a frantic rush to get out of the house and get to work.

Just before I left, I tried to cover the cake pops with the little plastic treat bags I had bought ($1.99) for this purpose.  The bags were too small.

I went to work, left at noon for an ELL training at district office, hurried to my accupuncture session at 4:00, and ran by the craft store to buy bigger treat bags ($4.99 - they only came in a package of 100!)

Now I sit.  I have bagged the cake pops, baked mini pumpkin muffins, had dinner, and I'm ready to call it a night.  I've gotten no school work accomplished for two evenings now, and tomorrow night I'll be interrupted every five minutes with trick or treaters.

I did the math.  $34.78 (without the tax) which comes out to about $1.29 per student.

I think I've been tricked. I could have bought them at Starbucks for about the same price! Although, I have no desire to eat these . . . the ones at Starbucks however would have been much more tempting!

Happy Halloween!

Update!
Last night I decided to slap a bit of leftover frosting on the mini pumpkin muffins, then add the left over sprinkles, but alas, I ran out of frosting a little over half way through. I went to bed, as it was nearly 10:00.

This morning I thought I'd whip up more frosting, but it seemed like too much effort for the 1/2 cup I needed.  Then I remembered I still had four squares of white chocolate.  Viola!  I melted those down, dipped the remaining mini muffins in the melted chocolate, then in the last of the orange and black sprinkles!

Now I have to cart all this stuff to school in an hour!  But, it will be fun to see the kids faces! That will be my "treat"!