Pumpkin Cake Pops

These Pumpkin Cake Pops are the bite-sized taste of a fall afternoon at the farm! With real pumpkin, spice cake, cream cheese frosting, and a white candy coating, they're an easy, crowd-pleasing treat for Halloween parties, bake sales, or cozy autumn days.

🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Pumpkin Cake Pops

• 🕰️ Prep Time: 45 minutes
• ⏰ Cook Time: 25 minutes
• 🍁 Flavor Profile: Spiced pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting, wrapped in a sweet candy coating.
• 🥄 Good For: Halloween party snacks and fall parties. Kids and adults love cake pops!
• 🧡 Difficulty: Kiddos love to help make cake pops!

"Made these this weekend for my hubby to take to his office! Deeeeeelish!...I'm always appreciative when a recipe calls for box mix but doesn't look or taste like it came from a box. Total winner!"

- KIM -

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🎃 The Ingredients You Need

• Spice cake mixture. If you've only ever hit up the cake mix aisle to grab chocolate or white cake for birthday cakes, you might not know that these little boxes of fall-flavored deliciousness are there. Grab it. Buy it. You will love it. If you can't find it or aren't a fan of boxed cake mix, you could make your own pumpkin spice cake recipe.
• Pumpkin puree. Instead of the oil or butter that the cake mix calls for, you're going to use pumpkin puree-it will keep the cake moist. Be sure to choose the pure pumpkin (not the pumpkin pie filling), since there will be plenty of sugar and pumpkin pie spice from the other ingredients, so you don't need the pie filling! Or, use your own homemade pumpkin puree.
• Vanilla candy coating. You may also see these sold as candy melts. We can usually find them in craft stores or in the baking aisle at the grocery store. You might be tempted to go with a chocolate coating instead, but I've found that the chocolate overpowers the pumpkin spice too much. Stick with the vanilla!
• Cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar. With these three ingredients combined, you get a dreamy cream cheese frosting to help hold the cake pops together. But if you don't want to make your own frosting, as Ina Garten would say, "store-bought is fine."
• Lollipop sticks. If you want to make cake balls instead of cake pops, you can skip the sticks!

Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.

🔁 Variations & Substitutions

• Cake pops or cake balls: These little bites of pumpkin spice tastiness can be make into cake pops (on lollipop sticks) or cake balls. We'll show you how to do both methods!
• Color changing cake pops: Feel free to mix up the colors of the candy coating. Orange candy melts would be fun and festive, while green or purple will give a monster vibe (especially if you add some candy eyes!).
• Skip the chocolate drizzle: If you don't want the chocolate drizzle, then make sure you add the sprinkles before the candy coating dries!
• Cake pop graveyard: Cover a box with brown or black paper, decorated to look like dirt in a graveyard. Cut holes in the box to stand each cake pop up like little round gravestones.
• Fall bake sales: Your fall cake pops could be the hit of the bake sale! Package them in little cellophane bags tied with Halloween ribbon or orange twine for easy sales.

🥣 How to Make Pumpkin Cake Balls

Step 1: Grease and flour two cake pans. The flour is key to getting the cake to release from the pan-greasing alone is not enough! But if you accidentally forget to flour, no worries. You're going to be crumbling this cake up anyways!

Step 2: Beat the cake mix with the eggs and pumpkin puree, then pour into the pans and bake for 25-30 minutes. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean, no crumbs (or close to no crumbs). Let the cake cool all the way.

Step 3: Whip up the cream cheese frosting. It's important to add the powdered sugar a little at a time to avoid poofing yourself with a big cloud of sugar.

Step 4: Break up the cake and mix in the frosting. That's right, the frosting is getting mixed into the cake, not going on top. You'll get the best results if you drop the spatula and finish the mixing with clean hands.

Step 5: Get your hands damp, and roll the cake mixture into 1" balls. You may need to rinse your hands a few times if your hands start to get too sticky. Freeze all the cake balls on a baking sheet.

Step 6: Melt the candy coating over low heat, until smooth. Stir in the oil, a bit at a time, until it takes on the consistency of thin alfredo sauce. You have to use oil here-milk or water will make the coating clump up (ask me how I know...oops). Remove from the heat. Use a fork to dip a cake ball into the coating, allowing the excess to drip off over the pan, then move to wax paper to harden.

Step 7: Melt the chocolate and use a piping bag or a spoon to drizzle it over each cake ball. Top with sprinkles.

🥣 How to Make Pumpkin Cake Pops

Step 1: Cake pops start out the same as cake balls-make the cake, mix it with the frosting, and form it into balls that you then freeze. Just like before, melt the candy coating, thinning it out with oil-do not try to thin it out with water or milk, or these cake pops won't work.

Dip the end of a lollipop stick into the candy coating, then gently press the dipped end into a cake ball. Dip the cake pop into the candy coating, spooning more over the top if needed.

Step 2: Dry the cake pops upright. There are a few ways to do this: in a piece of foam, in a cardboard box with holes poked through it, or even stuck into an upside-down colander if the holes are big enough! Drizzle with melted chocolate and top with sprinkles.

🙋🏻‍♀️ Pumpkin Cake Pops FAQs

🍎 More Halloween Recipes

If you tried this pumpkin cake pops or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!