Santa Hat Cake Pops - Try this at Home!

The little man has a birthday just a few days after Christmas -
Something I really tried to avoid...but hey - when babies are ready - babies are ready - even if it's almost a month early...

There is no daycare (or school) over his birthday - so he's been very excited to bring treats to daycare early - (We typically push his birthday celebrations out to January - but at the ripe age of five, he's now feeling a little bad about that!)
Sure, I could go to the local bakery and grab some cupcakes for the group - but, that's what so many other kids do...
The first year at this daycare, we attempted cake pops...remember how funny THAT was?

I've attempted them a time or two since then, and even had some girlfriends over for some official instructions one night...

They aren't THAT hard, well, at least not as hard as they used to be...
So, for the little man's birthday treats for daycare - we decided to make these adorable Santa Hat Cake Pops we found by searching the interwebs...

oh my oh my oh my!

the interwebs told me to make a cone shape instead of a ball ~ um, ok, easier said than done - but whatever!

Then, I read that you should stick the brim of the 'hat' in the white candy melts...so, I did...

 And then, because you are supposed to add your sprinkles when the candy melts are still melty, I did!

 And then, I melted up the nice red candy melts...(You'll notice I'm not using the deep glass cup that was mentioned in cake pop class, because I wasn't using sticks and making smallish hats, I thought that would be ok - and overall, it was.)

 And then...this happened...Santa Hat Cake Pops turned Volcanoes? Derek of course, loved them!

 Certainly not my best work, if I do say so myself! HA HA!

Perhaps, I should exercise more patience and hold them upside down longer while the red dried, so that it wouldn't run down onto my beautiful white sparkly sprinkled brim of the hat...but I was sort of squishing the brims and worried they were about to fall apart...

Instead, I scrapped the volcanoes - feeding them to my children (and possibly myself)

And created the red top off the hat first, sticking the little candy coated chocolate ball on top while the red was still drying...
And THEN, created the brim, after the red had run down and dried all it needed to...

The finished product?

Viola!

Santa Hat Cake Pops!

 If you look closely, you'll see that they certainly aren't perfect, but what is really? Right?

 And now they are boxed up and ready to share with our daycare friends as we celebrate two very special birthdays this month - the birth of Jesus, and the birth of our own precious little boy!