Moustache cake pops for Movember!

As a woman, it's difficult to contribute to Movember in an obvious way. While all my men friends have the option of showing their support for charity by growing a moustache for the month of November, I can only marvel at their hairy efforts and sponsor them to look ever more moustachioed and Magnum-like.

HOWEVER, this year the lovely Amy found some moustache-shaped moulds, so I could do Movember with the best of the boys, via a cake pop.

This is the pack the 'Munchstache' moulds came in...

... And this is what the pack looks like with a moustache cake pop contributing to the model's look.

Even more impressive than the one in the original picture - well, larger and more fulsome anyway!!

While the moulds provided a few different shapes, it was also necessary to make the moustaches in several different colours. I went for dark brown ('the Italianate'), blonde ('the Californian') and red ('the Scotsman').

Here, I model 'the Scotsman' which is possibly the colour my mo would grow (if I was a boy).
Several of my male friends have been a bit surprised to find that their mo's have grown in a bit gingery even if their hair colour is light brown or blond.

Here I model 'the Italianate'. I think you'll agree it's rather super.

I tried to persuade Mr Cupcake to be my model but he said he didn't want to be on the blog this time. I think he may have been a bit embarrassed about being a moustache model.

Making these cake pops was challenging. While the moulds look wonderful, they were difficult to get the cake pop mixture out of because they were closed over at the top so you couldn't push them out from above. The decoration lines on the top of the mould are meant to be used as the second stage, to be pressed into the mixture when it has already been stamped - this tends to work better on biscuit doughs so was not as useful to cake pop making sadly.
Also, the shape of the moustaches was difficult to work with because they were heavy in relation to their length, and have their weakest bit in the centre, so they tended to break in half easily.

This is me trying to get a mo out of its mould. I had to run a sharp knife around the edges and coax it out gently - I also dusted the top of the mixture from which I was stamping the shapes, with icing sugar, so that it wouldn't stick in the mould.

It took some hand shaping at the edges to repair the knife damage.

Here is a mo that has come nicely out of its mould. The mixture had to be refrigerated, stamped quickly and then refrigerated again before dipping.















This is a blond mo being dipped in melt mixture.

For a bit of detail on the melt mix and using it to dip cake pops, have a look here.

To make the mo's more realistic I pulled the dipping fork over the smooth surface of the pops, to create a 'hairy', swirly effect.

Soon some red mo's were added ... I combined red, brown and yellow melts to get this colour. To be perfectly honest I wasn't 100% happy with the colour.

When you have done enough mo's of one colour you can scrape the still-hot mixture into a sandwich bag and leave it to cool down and harden in the bag. You can store it and use it again. Check that it hasn't got any stray cake pop crumbs in it though. That can mess things up for you bigtime.

With the chocky ones - sorry, the 'Italianates' - instead of putting lines on them with the dipping fork, I sprinkled them with chocky sprinkles. This looked appropriately hairy.

The mo's were apt to break in half during the dipping process. However, the melt mixture is very sticky and as long as the two halves were placed together in the proper shape, they would stick together into one piece again. With this one, you can just see how I have put some extra melt mixture on it to stick the two halves together.

Three different takes on 'the Californian'. A good mo for the beach. Accessorise with tight shorts and well developed biceps.

Three takes on 'the Italianate'. Also good for the beach, but better accessorised with chest hair and gold chains.

Top to bottom: the French Acrobat; the Merv Hughes; the Chopper.

Happy Movember everyone and don't forget to make a donation to your participating moustachioed friends!