Any Cakepop experts out there?

[OllieinOrange]

DS2 has requested cakepops to take into school for his birtday. Apparently cupcakes are "not cool"
Was thinking of making them with banana bread. Can I use normal chocolate to coat them or would I be better off buying those coloured candy melts. Have read that chocolate runs off more easily. Have never used candy melts before - is it a thicker consistency than chocolate once melted?

Also - after Ive dipped them in the chocolate/candymelts, do you place them face down on greaseproof paper or stick the stick into some oasis? Am worried if I did the former, the chocolate would come away leaving me with bald cakepops once I picked them off of the paper!

No idea how to decorate them either yet - was thinking a quick roll in some mini smarties.

Any advice?

I did them with chocolate cake, cooked the cake, crumbled it up and then mixed with some melted chocolate, as I found it almost impossible to get them to stick to the stick with normal cake - it just kept crumbling off. Stuck them in the fridge, all the sticks sitting in a polystyrene block so they were upright. Then when hard, rolled in more melted choc and then the very messy bit - rolled into coconut / hundreds and thousands / fudge pieces. They cost an absolute fortune to make, what with the cake, copious amounts of choc and toppings!

The cake topping / cooking chocolate adheres to the cakepop better, but proper chocolate tastes a million times better, so depends whether you want to go for appearance over taste. I'll put a pic of the ones I did on my profile. Never doing them again if I can help it though, hours of work, kitchen looked like it had been bombed, batch of cupcakes / muffins so much easier!

we made cake pops the way an American friend does - take the cheapest supermarket Madeira cake you can find, mix with some buttercream frosting, then put on sticks and cover with melted candy-melts. I stuck my sticks in a bit of polystyrene to dry, so you don't get a flat side. Then decorated with mini m+ms

CultOfSkaro - thats exactly the sort of thing I was aiming for (the finished product, not all the hassle and mess ). Am going for looks over taste I think given they are to be eaten by 5/6 year olds (is it wrong to think like that ?)!
ByTheWay maderia cake is a brilliant idea thank you. I dont live in the UK but the supermarket here sells huge blocks of the stuff for a euro (and actually is very tasty - make DSs birthday cakes using it as you just cut it into whatever shape you want before icing, this year's is a rocket).

Thank you both for the useful replies. Wish me luck...

I'm no expert but i have made one batch of cakepops. There's plenty of ideas here. I got her book for Christmas but i haven't used yet.

The ones i made had to be vegan/nut free (as i was making them for a friends daughter) but the theory is just the same. This was the recipe i used.

I found that although i'd left my balls of dough in the fridge overnight, they still weren't solid enough so i popped them in the freezer. Plus for the first few my chocolate coating was too warm so it dribbled off. I coated them in chocolate and sprinkled them with purple glitter sugar. I dried mine upright with the lolly sicks stuck into polystyrene so i didn't have a flat side.

Unfortunately i can't post a picture because the kids all ate them so quickly!!!