Monkey Pop: Too cute to eat!

I got the idea to make monkey-shaped cake pops a while back. I was looking for something to make for the concession stand at Mini-Mac's show and, since there is a Circle of Life scene, I figured some jungle animals would be nice. I looked all over the web for ideas and, man, there are some creepy looking monkey and lion cake pops out there.

I finally settled on a design of my own that combined the best parts of several designs I saw.

But they involved using a Peanut Butter chip for the mouth and nose and one of the rules for the baked goods at the concession stand is "no nuts." So I won't be making them for "Wish Upon a Star". Which is too bad because the chocolate peanut butter cake pops are to die for. If I do say so myself.

I also won't be posting a recipe because I've decided to enter a recipe contest and every contest I've looked at has the following rule:

Your recipe can not have been previously published anywhere including ... blogs ... 

Bummer.

But the basics are pretty easy to figure out. I made a chocolate "cake" using my special "low sugar" substitutions to a brownie recipe and then mushed it up with peanut butter. The first batch, I used PB2, which I think works great for cake pops. The second batch, I did some with PB2, but I didn't have enough so I did the rest with regular peanut butter. They didn't hold together too well. After the first two exploded when I tried to monkey-fy them, I gave up and just did regular cake pops covered in sprinkles. And was very, very careful getting the chocolate on.

The second set came out better. I'm getting better at controlling the chocolate. But we ate them before I could take a picture. They went fast! So just imagine a lot of monkeys like this only with neater body parts.