Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops

I’ve had these in the back of my head for ages, and while they didn’t turn out precisely as planned, they did look adorable and taste fantastic, so I’m counting them as a win!

It all started when I saw the boxes of miniature ice cream cones at the grocery store… in Canada. I’d been unable to find the mini cones anywhere near me in the US, but when I saw them on the shelf I recklessly sacrificed suitcase space and picked up three boxes. Totally worth it.

Then they languished in my cabinets for a few months until I had the opportunity to use them. But the opportunity did arise, first at my annual ice cream social, and then when my daughter was invited to a birthday party this summer. Out came the boxes of cones, out came my bag-ful of frozen cake scraps, and I was all set!

Rather than use cream cheese or chocolate frosting (neither of which I had on hand), I bound my cake crumbs together with chocolate syrup. It worked just fine, and I’ll be using this in the future if it comes up. Then I molded clumps of moistened cake into conical shapes with a bulb on the end and inserted them into my cones. I froze them that way for a bit to let them set.

I’d read that you can melt down canned frosting and pour it to make a firm glaze, so for my first round (ominous music) I microwaved a can of pink frosting and spooned it over my frozen cake pops. It set up nicely and I added sprinkles, then let them set at room temperature overnight, hoping for a firm surface.

That was a mistake. It was probably partly the condensation from the frozen-but-thawing cake, and partly the fact that frosting just doesn’t set all that hard, but either way the frosting basically slid off of my cake and puddled on the parchment paper. See my before and after?

I had to re-dip to salvage them. For round two I melted some plain white candy melts, sprinkled in a few paramount crystals to get it loose enough (I can never get mine smooth and dippable without paramount crystals or shortening), and spooned the resulting mixture over my sad-looking pops. The result wasn’t all that smooth or perfect, since the warm candy kind of blended with the melting frosting, but sprinkles worked to disguise a multitude of sins. I set them upright on the baking sheet, resulting in flat tops, but they were fine.

Anyway, lesson learned! No melted frosting, stick with candy melts! And I still have a whole other box of mini cones to try this again the next time a party comes around!