Cupcake Sugar Cookie Pops

A while back, I saw these beauties featured on one of my favorite food blogs, Our Best Bites, and knew that I had to try it! This blog always has such great tutorials on how-to's. They make the most complicated things seem easy! Even this sugar cookie business.


I haven't had a whole lot of experience with decorating sugar cookies. I've never gone all out and covered the entire cookie with beautiful designs, as I have seen others do fantastically! I've only done the draw-a-few-white-lines-on-snowflake-cookies thing. It's...a daunting thing to take on, you know? But after reading meticulously through Our Best Bites' tutorials, I felt like I was ready!

(Since they do such a great and thorough job on guiding you through the process, and since I'm such a novice at this whole sugar cookie decorating thing, I'm going to be brief in this entry. I will only discuss the areas that I personally had problems with. For more info, please reference their awesome site for detailed tutorials- see links below. They explain it better than I ever could!)

(1) The Sugar Cookie Dough

Their sugar cookie recipe was super easy to follow and make. It came together really well, and quite quickly! On their site, they say to refrigerate it after the dough comes together for about 1-2 hours.


However, as a time saving tip, they suggested rolling out the dough right away and sticking it in the freezer. I found that this was the best way to go. I tried it both ways and found that freezing it was more effective than refrigerating it because:

(1) Freezing it only takes about 5 minutes before the dough is good to go- SO much less time!
(2) Freezing it automatically gives you the right consistency, so that the dough lifts up easily after you cut into it.
(3) With the refrigeration method, I found it harder to control the consistency of the dough, making it harder to cut out the cookies. Sometimes, if I left it in for too long, the lump of dough would be too cold to even roll out. Then, if I left it out to warm a bit, it might get too soft, then I'd end up freezing it anyway, after I rolled it out.

Basically, forget the refrigeration step. Go straight to rolling it out and freezing it for 5 minutes. As for the excess dough, it will be too hard to roll back into a ball at first, so leave it aside and work on a different piece. It will thaw out quickly. Or you can play around with it a bit by rolling it with your hands. This will speed up the process.

(2) Making the Sugar Cookie Pops

One of the reasons why I put off making these was because I didn't have the right cutters. I wanted something cool and kept my eye out for it whenever I was at kitchenware stores (which is quite often). Imagine my excitement when I saw these cupcake cutters at Crate and Barrel! I couldn't believe it! Perfect for my blog, wouldn't you say?! They came in two sizes, too! Yup, there were two cutters in each pack!


I only used the smaller cookie cutter because the larger one would've been too heavy for the lollipop sticks.


I bought some 6 inch long lollipop sticks from Michael's, which ended up being the perfect length.

You see how the cookie dough doesn't sit flatly on the lollipop stick? I was worried about that. I wanted my cookie to bake flat, but it looked like that wasn't going to happen. I think I didn't roll out my dough to be thick enough.


Here's what they looked like when they came out of the oven. They expanded a bit, but not too much. Not enough to become flat and completely cover the lollipop stick. I started to panic and thought about baking another batch. But then I thought: hey, maybe I can cover it up with frosting! So I pushed on.


The cookies held up pretty well! Here's a front and back view. They weren't falling off the stick, as I was half expecting.

(3) Frosting and Decorating

Their icing recipe consists of a few simple ingredients: light corn syrup, powdered sugar, milk, and extract.


The directions were really easy to follow and pretty soon I achieved the right consistency.

I used simple icing bags and snipped off the tips ever so slightly. Yess! Ready to decorate!

It was easier than I expected! Although, I did use really simple decorating techniques. =) I basically just colored them in and stuck on some M&Ms.

Leave the cookies sitting out for about 24 hours, so that the frosting can dry and set.

(4) Cute Packaging!

I found some clear treat bags, a spool of cute ribbon, and an amazing cupcake stamp from Impress.


The stamp is a two-in-one! On one side of it, there's the cupcake image, and on the smaller end, you can use it to stamp the words "hey cupcake." How cute is that?!


I also made a few non-pop cookies. These packaged up nicely! I used the "Hey Cupcake" stamp to seal the back of each package. It worked out pretty well with some double sided tape.


The pops turned out even better! I love how the ribbon matches the cupcake frosting! And see how you can barely notice the "wrinkles" in the cookie, now that they frosting has set and dried? Awesome!


For the pops, I attached the "Hey Cupcake" tags to the end of each ribbon. It turned out to be super cute too!


I'm really glad I finally got a chance to do this cookie project! It took a long time, from beginning to end, but it was really fun and acted as a great artistic outlet. Wouldn't these be perfect for a birthday party or shower?

Give these a try! If a novice like me can do it, anyone can! Just be sure to read through Our Best Bites' great tutorials first! =)

Click HERE for Our Best Bites' Sugar Cookie Decorating Tutorial
Click HERE for Our Best Bites' Sugar Cookie Pops Tutorial
Click HERE for Our Best Bites' Basic Sugar Cookie Recipe