These cute rainbow cake pops were made for my little niece's baptism. Today I'll show you how to make the rainbow out of fondant and decorate the cake pops with it.
To be honest, I don't like eating fondant—it's too sweet for me—but I do love decorating with it! These days, you can buy it in so many beautiful, bright, and even pastel colors, it's practically tempting to decorate with fondant, isn't it?
Since not everyone is comfortable working with fondant, I have summarized my 5 tips for decorating and working with fondant here!
5 tips for working & decorating with fondant
- To prevent the fondant from sticking to your hands or the baking mat, use a little cornstarch. (Sometimes coconut oil is recommended, but I haven't tried that yet.)
- Use fondant at room temperature.
- Before you work with the fondant, knead it from the outside in until it is nice and smooth. This will avoid air bubbles, which are particularly annoying with fondant.
- With a little water you can stick fondant to fondant and use small toothpicks to fix the fondant for figures or on baked goods.
- You can store leftover fondant easily! Make sure it's sealed airtight and protected from light.
Recipe for rainbow cake pops
Depending on how old your little ones are, they might be able to help you model the fondant rainbows for the rainbow cake pops. Your little ones can definitely help you with baking the sponge cake or crumbling it for the cake pop mixture. My little ones can also help me roll the cake pops – the shape doesn't have to be perfect, and if they're still not round enough for you, you can always add the final touches. 😉
Ingredients for 12 rainbow cake pops
Cakepops
- 420g sponge cake (you can use your favorite sponge cake – the recipe for the muffins of the vanilla mini mermaid cupcakes or the recipe for the chocolate nut cake are also excellent – or if you need it even faster, you can buy a ready-made sponge cake from the supermarket)
- 1-3 tsp neutral cream cheese
Decoration
- pink cake melts*
- Rolled fondant pastel colors*
- some cornstarch
- Food glue*
- white sugar sprinkles (I used the ones from my sprinkles box)
- 12 pink striped paper cake pop sticks*
Baking Accesories
Baking paper, ruler, modeling set* or wooden spoon, knife, mixing bowl, kitchen scales, microwave or saucepan & bowl for melting the melts
Preparation
The great thing about fondant decorations is that you can prepare them days in advance. That's what I did with the mini fondant rainbows. The day before I shaped and decorated the cake pops, I modeled the little rainbows and let them harden overnight on a piece of baking paper. (However, if you really like fondant, you should use it as fresh as possible or store it in an airtight container!)
How to make mini rainbows out of fondant
- First, knead the fondant (each color separately) with a little bit of baker's starch until it forms a smooth mass.
- In the next step, roll the fondant into small rolls with a diameter of about 0.5 cm.
- First, wrap the yellow fondant roll in an arched shape around the modeling ball from the modeling set (see picture instructions). If you don't have such a modeling set on hand, you can also wrap the fondant rolls around the narrow end of a wooden spoon. This will create the arched shape and keep the arch stable.
- Now, lightly moisten the yellow fondant sheet with water on the side where the next color will be applied and place the next fondant roll on top—in my case, the pink fondant roll. The water ensures that the fondant rolls stick together and gives the sheet stability.
- As described in the previous step, you now process all the other fondant colors of the rainbow.
- After all the colors have been used, cut the ends of the rainbow to the same length using a knife and a ruler.
- Now you can decorate the fondant rainbow with white sugar sprinkles (as clouds).
- To harden, place the individual fondant rainbows on a sheet of baking paper and let them air dry. If you want the fondant rainbows to be eaten and want them to stay soft, you should seal them airtight on the baking paper, for example, in a Tupperware container or using cling film.
Roll cake pops (without baking pan)
- Crumble the sponge cake into a mixing bowl with your hands or a food processor and add some cream cheese. (A quick tip: the cream cheese should help to press the cake crumbs together and keep them from falling apart. If the cake is already very moist, you'll only need a very small amount of cream cheese. Remember: the drier the sponge cake, the more binding agent (in our case, cream cheese) you'll need!)
- Now roll the cake pop mixture into 12 roughly equal-sized balls. You can weigh about 35 g for each ball.
- Next, melt the melts for your rainbow cake pops in a water bath or in the microwave.
- Now dip about 1.5 cm of the tip of a cake pop stick into the liquid melts and then gently press it into a cake pop ball. Repeat this process for all cake pops.
- Once the melts are dry and the sticks are firmly fixed in the cake pop, take a cake pop and dip the cake pop completely into the pink melts. Before placing the cake pop on a baking sheet to dry, let any excess icing drip off by twisting the cake pop slightly by the stick and gently tapping it on the side of a bowl.
- Once the excess icing has drained, place the cake pop on the baking paper and carefully press the fondant rainbow onto the cake pop. It's helpful if you lean the rainbow slightly against the stick. You may need to position the rainbow with your hand for the first few seconds, but since melts dry very quickly, the fondant rainbow will quickly adhere to the dry melts.
- Now do this with all the remaining cake pops and you'll have pretty rainbow cake pops for your next cake session!
Preparation in pictures
With these small but extremely fine delicacies you can conjure up a pretty highlight on the cake table.
My kids and I wish you and your kids lots of fun baking this!
Yours, Lia
Have you baked the recipe?
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