Why Are Cake Pops So Expensive?

Birthdays, Graduations, Anniversaries, Baby Showers, Gender Reveals or Family Get-togethers – every occasion is incomplete without a cake to celebrate.

Even people who aren’t fans of desserts or sweets can’t say no to a beautiful piece of cake. In short, there are a lot of occasions in our life for us to have cake.

Cake pops are essentially cakes but made in a different way. They are considered a dessert that can be an alternative to cakes, or simply as an additional dessert besides the main cake.

Cake pops, just like cupcakes, are a popular dessert item in mainly birthday parties and Gender Reveal parties, because they are easy to distribute between guests.

Cakes and Cake Pops: What is the Difference?

Cakes are, of course, quite familiar to everyone. Whether they are small and simple or elaborate and unbelievably gorgeous, we’ve all had cakes at special occasions of our lives, or even whenever we’ve felt like it.

Cake pops, on the other hand, are a more recent addition to the dessert category. They look like small balls of cake, usually covered in a hard and chewy layer of chocolate and decorated with sprinkles.

Cake pops may be simple or decorated, but they are roughly the same size, meant to be finished in only a few bites.

Cake pops are usually attached to sticks, made to look like lollipops. Instead of being served on a plate and eaten with a spoon or a fork, they are held as lollipops and bitten off in pieces.

Because cake pops are individually sized and easy to serve, they have very quickly become a staple in parties and celebrations.

How are Cake Pops Made?

Typically, a cake pop follows all the rules of a traditional cake but resembles a lollipop.

The recipe for cake pops follows the same recipe as a regular cake, but the whole cakes are later broken into pieces and rolled with hand to convert into balls of cake.

The cake crumbs are also mixed with icing or melted chocolate to make sure they retain the shape of a ball, even when standing on a stick.

They are also given a coating of melted chocolate or icing, and decorated with sprinkles and other embellishments. Finally, a lollipop stick is inserted into them, making them resemble candies instead of cakes.

Originally, cake pops started as a clever way to use leftover cake in bakeries instead of letting them go to waste. Since bakeries cut cakes of basic shapes into different shapes based on their clients’ orders.

This leaves them a lot of leftover cake which goes bad really fast; to stop cake from wasting, turning them into cake pops saves a lot of leftover cake.

Leftover cakes can be broken down into crumbs, which are then mixed with soft icing or frosting. The soft cake is then converted into little balls, squares or cubes by hand and attached to a lollipop stick.

Holding the stick, the cake pop is dipped in hot melted chocolate, making a solid layer of chocolate around the cake pops. The hot melted chocolate is also a good stage to add some sprinkles or other embellishments on the cake pop.

Each piece of cake pop needs to be refrigerated for a few hours to set them. The melted chocolate helps the cake pops to retain its shape later.

Cake pops are also made from cakes that turn out to be too dry or too crumbly. Sometimes, when because of miscalculation, cakes come out dry because of too much baking powder or too little milk/butter.

Crumbly and dry cakes cannot be decorated properly and they are pretty much worthless, but they can be turned into cake pops.

When cakes become too dry and crumbly, they can be easily broken down into crumbs. The cake crumbs are then mixed with some icing or frosting, which makes them less dry. The rest of the procedure is the same with all kinds of cake pops.

Why are Cake Pops So Expensive?

Although they are smaller, cake pops are – universally – more expensive than regular cakes. Of course, the sizes are completely different but comparatively, cake pops come out to be costlier to make and decorate than regular cake.

This is because making cake pops require double the work of making traditional cakes. To make cake pops, we have to first bake a cake following the usual recipe.

Using leftover cake or ruined cake emits this step but making cake pops still requires an additional step of baking a cake.

This is the reason that cake pops are more expensive than cakes, because the production process is a lengthy one.

It takes double the time and the effort to make cake pops if you are doing them from scratch. Even if you use leftover cake, it still means a few extra steps to turn them into individual cake pops.

Cake pops are also individually decorated, which takes more time than decorating a whole cake. They also need more time to make, set and decorate, as well as individually wrap and store.

Besides, cake pops are sold individually, which means that they are individually priced. While  a regular cake is priced as a unit, a dozen cake pops that roughly make up the size of a single cake are individually priced.

This is another reason that cake pops are more expensive, as you are paying for a single unit of cake, but dozens of cake pops of the same size.

For all these reasons, cake pops are expensive. However, they are still immensely popular all around the world for a lot of occasions, as they are beautiful, delicious and completely unique.