Hole in one, anybody?

I'm not much of a golfer. I've been to the range, hit a few balls, but that's about it. The growing corns on my palms were a pain, I wasn't a fan of squinting after a speck into the far horizon. Handicaps still made me think of  hobbling on crutches, getting torched by the midday sun made me see double.

Don't think golf's my calling.

That didn't stop me from getting all excited about last week's golf-themed birthday though.

It was a trilogy April birthday celebration - 2 golfer boys + 1 non-golfer girl.

The order was for 50 cake pops, and I got ambitious as I planned and started drafting the designs.

The plain cake cardboard base morphed into an actual cake-layer golf course. Chocolate cake spiked with raisins, covered with pale green fondant. Mmmm...

Read more about Bakerella's fondant creations here.

Don't try tinting white fondant green from scratch,
the trouble's not worth it. Get Green colored fondant,
there's plenty else for you to do

A darker green path across the course to add definition, and a little 18th hole flag at the corner. Let's hope someone makes it to the flag.

Much as golf isn't the easiest game around, the golf-theme was great for cake pop creations.

In went some lemon-vanilla golf balls, indented with a dogbone tool.
Some green trees around for effect.

You need the bigger dogbone tool to
create the right-sized holes for the golf balls

 What else, hmmm...  Of course: golf bags.

These needed detailed fondant work. Cut white rectangular and rounded corner strips to form the bag trimmings, made some holes with a pointed cornice tool. Bag pockets for the front, and orange bag handles molded.

Then came the tricky part: the golf clubs to stick out of the bag. These were tiny and after I tinted the fondant gray - the first few I sculpted kept breaking off. It took a number of tries to get the club shapes and proportions workable but I finally got it.

Keep the fondant add-ons light
so they don't fall off or drag the pops down

I added the birthday names to tshirt-shaped pops scattered all across the green.

Almost there.

Except the birthday girl - who didn't golf!
So I added a 'refreshments' stand for her.

All things pretty and nice!

Decked it out with chocolate covered chocolate pops, each with something sweet that she likes.
Cupcakes, sweets, gifts, ice-cream cones, tiny cups of cuppucinos (her fave!).

All done. Phew.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

ps. If you're looking for sumthin' special for Mother's Day (May 13), come this way...

Get crackin' ... it's Mother's Day!

Petite Pops goes to the zoo... Curious George!

Curious George might have just slightly smaller ears, but I think he'd hit it off quite well with our mischevious monkeys :)

The inspiration behind these pops was the birthday girl's resemblance to the furry mammal. In a good way. Eyes the size of saucers, ears that stood out a little, round skittle-like head.

Very endearing.

Chocolately round nekkid monkey heads!

The trickiest part to the monkeys was their yellow mouth. 

Candy melt discs were perfect cuz they had a little upturn in the center that resembled the monkeys' upturned mouth. I cut them down with circular molds, and had to work quickly so the heat from my hands didn't start melting them. 

Mmmm, too big, too thick. Monkey looked like a bee stung his lips, or he'd been sucking on an empty Vitagen bottle for too long. 

Sliced them down vertically by half - bingo.

Making pops is a lot of trial and error. You have to spend time experimenting, looking for parts that would work as you wanted them to, adjusting positions of each fixture to sit just the way you like it.

On went the beige eyes and ears, finished with royal icing piped to fill in eyeballs, a nose and a smile.

Oooh... I see the light

If you're Monkey cake pops, just remember that the ears sticking out make them more suitable to go into an arrangement of pops rather than individual treat bags - you don't want a trail of ears falling off.

Have fun!

There goes the eye, right after the ears!