Recipes Used:
- Brownies (x2) – https://www.pinterest.com/pin/357121445471939626/
- S’mores – https://spaceshipsandlaserbeams.com/smores-cupcakes/
- Strawberry Lemonade – https://jenrecipes.com/raspberry-cake-with-lemon-buttercream/
Products used in this video (Affiliate links)
Video Summary
I found these amazing push-up cake molds at Hobby Lobby and had to try them! I’d never seen anything like them before – they work just like those ’90s push-up ice creams but for cake.
What I Made:
- S’mores Push-Ups: I doubled my brownie recipe (since mine always turn out too thin), then layered them with marshmallow cream and crushed graham crackers
- Strawberry Lemonade Push-Ups: Made a from-scratch strawberry cake with lemon buttercream – it’s not really my specialty but I was excited to try
- Ice Cream Cone Cake Balls: Turned my leftover cake into adorable cake balls with mini cone toppers
My Experience:
- The s’mores were trickier to assemble than expected – had issues with my piping tip being too small
- The strawberry ones were much easier to layer
- I’m definitely not an icing pro but learned to use a paddle attachment instead of whisk
- Everything turned out way cuter than I imagined – they look like little firecrackers!
The Result: I’m absolutely obsessed with how these turned out. They’re going to be perfect for our neighborhood potluck, and I have plenty to take to work too. These little cute desserts are totally my happy place – I think everyone prefers them over big cakes anyway!
Video Transcript
Good morning. We are doing something so fun today. I was at Hobby Lobby getting a ton of candy supplies when I saw these. These are like push-ups—if you remember that ice cream from like the ’90s. I think they still have them, but where you push up the center and then ice cream would come out. That’s what these are, but they’re for cake. So I had to buy them, and let’s make some cake. I want to make two different kinds. I want to do s’mores with some brownies, and then I want to do a strawberry cake as well. So let’s get started on making some brownies.
Brownie Recipe
Okay, I am going to double the batch of brownies. And we need to get our butter melted. Did I say cookies? I meant brownies. I’m a little tired. The sun is not out for some reason. Okay, while that’s melting, let’s get our eggs in. Whoa, that one kind of exploded on me. That one, too. That’s so weird. I’ve never had like an egg squirt out before, and that happened twice.
See, that’s good. I always worry though about putting it in with the eggs. I don’t want to cook them. Let’s add a splash of vanilla. We need two tablespoons of cooking oil. So I’m just going to eyeball it. About one. That’s about two. I think I’m going to have to refill, but we need 2 and 1/4 cups of sugar.
So there’s one and a quarter. There we go. I’m going to get this mixing together, and then we will add in the butter. Okay, that’s looking good. Let’s get the butter added.
We also need a cup of flour and a cup of cocoa powder. Half a teaspoon of salt. And I’m actually doubling this recipe because my brownies usually are super thin, and I want them to be a little bigger.
Scrape the sides. All right, let’s get these into the pan. Spray it first. And I usually put half this amount of batter into this pan, so hopefully it doesn’t end up being too big. But I used to use an 8 by 8. This is a 9 by 9. And so they’ve been turning out super thin every time I make them. So I’m hoping that doubling the recipe makes it to where they are perfect size. Also, that’s so unlike me. I’m someone who cuts recipes in half, not doubles them.
Okay, into an oven at 350 until they are done. I don’t know how long it’ll be because this is more than I usually do. And then let’s make our strawberry cake.
Strawberry Cake
I’m going to make the strawberry cake. We are going to start out with a whole bunch of sugar. There is one, and then two sticks of butter. And you know, I don’t make actual cakes all that often, so I’m excited about this. We are going to use softened butter. There’s one, and there’s two. I’m going to beat these together first. All right. Now that that’s light and fluffy, we are going to get our eggs added and our vanilla and our lemon juice.
It’s going to be like a strawberry lemonade. I’m so excited. This actually calls for raspberries, but I’m using strawberries because that’s what I have.
Can you hear the kids next door? They’re having fun outside. Okay, let’s give this a mix.
Okay, let’s get our dry ingredients in there. We need 2 and 1/2 cups of flour. Half a teaspoon of salt. Nope. Baking powder is what I just did. Well, we can fix that. Here’s half a teaspoon of salt. Now, baking powder, we needed 2 and 1/2 teaspoons. So that’s fine. We need four more of these.
Okay, I think I’m used to just using my tiny salt, so that’s what I thought this was. I’m going to mix it up. And then while it’s mixing, we need to get our strawberries chopped up.
Okay, I’m going to actually give that a scrape down once we get our strawberries in. These strawberries were frozen, but that’ll be fine. They are thawed now. I’m not going to use all that extra strawberry juice, though. I might leave it for maybe the icing.
So I’m just going to do little tiny pieces. Okay. In they go. Let’s scrape it down. All right, let’s give it one last mix. All right, that looks delicious.
So it’s hard to tell exactly how many of these containers I’ll need. The recipe showed three layers on one picture and two layers on another. So if I do two, I feel like they’d be really thick, and I don’t want really, really thick layers. So I think I might do three, but like I don’t have three of the same size. So we’re going to just go with it. I’m going to start by just spraying three of them, I think. And then we’ll see if I want to use that last one. Cake is definitely not my specialty.
That was two big globs. One, another two-ish. I think that’s a good amount in there. That’s what I’m trying to say. Yeah, I think—I don’t know how much it’s going to puff.
We got a little unmixed down there. Yeah, I think I’m going to use this other one, too. All right, this is what we’re going with. Hopefully, this is the right call. Maybe I’ll make a little cake. I don’t know how to make cakes, but we can try if I have enough cake. I think I will get it in the oven. Once those come out of the oven, I’m going to let them cool completely, and then we will assemble our little cake pops.
Out of the Oven
Okay, these just came out of the oven. I am going to see if I can get them tipped out. By “just,” I mean like 5-10 minutes ago. They’ve been out of the oven for a second. Trying to figure out the best way. They look like they’re going to crack. Maybe I’ll let them cool for a little longer just like this, so that way they’re not on the hot pan, and then we’ll be able to get them out. These ones, we’ll let them cool like that for a little while longer. And this one, I think I’m going to put a towel over it because maybe I’ll just make some like cake pops.
Okay, it’s been a little while longer. I thought I was going to struggle to get them out, but I just got that one out by doing this. So I’m going to see if it works again. I just lightly am lifting while holding the cake and just trying to loosen the bottom.
And I can see that it is lifting from the bottom little by little. Okay, there we go. Nice. And since the bottom was in the silicone, I’m leaving it up because it’s a little bit sticky.
Okay, we got it. Nice. Then it’s just this one that we did too soon. And that’s okay. We’ll just make that into a cake pop. They’re still a little bit warm, so I’m going to let them cool down a little bit more. I did put the brownies in the fridge to kind of speed up the cooling process, and then we’ll be able to make our little treats.
S’mores Push Up Cakes
The sun decided to come out, which is fantastic. I’m going to start with the brownies. And let’s see what we can do here. I think I want to just use one of these to get the right size. And we’ll see. Will it just come out? Yeah, I need to cut a bunch of these first, and then we can start assembling. So let’s—oh, I made a mistake.
Okay, put that back in. So I’m going to just get a bunch of these before I start assembling because I don’t want all of them to have like the brownie edge thing going on. Hopefully, I get two brownie pieces per one of these. Will that fit? Hopefully.
Oh wow. I use a different brand of cocoa powder. That is way more chocolatey than normal.
Okay, I have a little bit extra in case I screw something up. Plus, I have enough to have brownies for a while. I’m going to get this one’s like edge wiped. Okay, I think I’ve got that all washed off and dried. Let’s see. Stick this back in here. I have out some graham crackers that I already crushed up. I need to get my marshmallow cream into there. Let’s see what’s the best way to do this.
Hmm. Let’s get this into this thing. That’s how I’m going to put the cream on and not have it touch the sides hopefully.
I don’t know how much I’m going to need. I think I’m going to start with just this though. It’s like halfway full, and I can add more if I need to. Hey, we’re about ready to try it. Push that down. Okay, so the thought—let’s just get six out first so that way we’re ready. I’m so excited for these. They’re going to be so cute.
Okay, so how do I think it’s going to be the easiest way to do this? Okay, I guess I’m just going to push it down with my fingers, knowing that this is how I’m getting it in. I probably didn’t even need to wash that one. Trying to evenly go on like all the sides so I don’t squish it. Okay, I’m going to get all of the bottom brownies in first, and then we’ll add a little bit of the marshmallow cream, and we’ll start layering it up. Also, I just realized I only have five out and I need six.
All righty, that worked out very well. Let’s see if we can get some of this in here. Oh, wow. This is just squeezing the air out of it. It’s not really—whoopsies. This is not working. I wonder though if I do it without the tip. Maybe it was the tip that was causing the issue.
Okay. Well, I ran out, but that does seem to be what the issue was. So let’s see. We’ll do crumbs. That one’s got like the biggest crumb thing. There we go.
Okay, look how cute. These brownies are the perfect size. This is working so well. Look at those. I love them. Let’s get this refilled. I definitely liked using this. I just had a tip on that was too small.
Okay, now I’m wondering, have you seen these or heard of these or anything? I hadn’t seen them at all anywhere. And that’s saying a lot because I’m in a Facebook group or a bunch of them, and I get things like this on my feed on Facebook constantly. So the fact that I hadn’t ever seen this or heard of it when I went to the store was just crazy. All right, I think this is maxing out how much I can get in there without squeezing it down.
Okay. And then to finish them off, we’re going to top them with a little bit more of the cream. And then we’ll add a little bit of fun as well.
Cool. Okay, we’re going to give it a little more crumbs and then just for fun, a couple chocolate chips.
Okay, seriously, how are these just so stinking cute? Oh my goodness. Okay, I’m going to get the tops on these. And it looks like I filled them just enough to where the fluff is not going to spill out, which is great. I did that on purpose. I just got lucky is what happened. Then we need to make some frosting for our strawberry cakes, and we can make those as well. I am super impressed and happy with how these turned out. But they kind of look like little firecrackers. That’s funny. I didn’t realize this stand holds so many. I would have probably bought another pack if I’d known. So I only have six more, and this could hold eight more after those six.
Okay, let me clean up, and then we’re going to make the icing. I’m working on getting everything cleaned up. And I remembered I had these cute little marshmallows that I wanted to use. So of course, we need to come back and put them on here.
Yeah, totally necessary step. Also, the lid for these little marshmallow things fits perfectly on a mason jar.
Well, we’ll leave those off. The ones that land on the bottom will just be for me. There you go.
Lemon Buttercream
We are going to whip up the icing. I’m going to start with two sticks of softened butter. And I’m going to just let that beat on its own for a little bit just to soften it up even more. I guess that’s all we’re going to do because it got stuck in there. That’s okay. We’ll just let this beat for a while.
We need four cups of powdered sugar. Two. Three. And four. I don’t have zest of a lemon, so I’m going to adjust to use the lemon juice. We’re going to do three tablespoons and half of a teaspoon of vanilla. And we’re going to mix this for quite a while because we want it to have a great texture, not a buttery texture.
So I forgot that we also need two tablespoons of heavy cream. So that’s going in—a little more because it was a little shy. Okay, I’m going to get the bowl scraped, get that butter incorporated that’s still stuck in the beater, and then we’ll mix it again. Okay, I think that looks good to me. Let’s taste it. It tastes delicious. It could definitely use a little bit more mixing, though. Let me get this all down. Maybe I should have used a paddle attachment instead of a whisk.
Okay, I got out a piping bag, and I did give this another good mix with the paddle attachment, and it seems to be a much better texture. I’m definitely not an icing pro. So that’s what I’ve learned just today. Going to get a little bit of this in here. And, you know, did I actually want to use—I wasn’t going to use a tip. I was just going to like swirl it. I think that that’s probably what I’m still going to do because I didn’t plan.
This is a big learning curve getting icing into a piping bag. Okay. Had a rubber band on it.
Strawberry Lemonade Push Up Pops
Okay. Here are the cakes. Let’s see if we—how many little circles can I cut out of this? I wonder if I’ll be able to do probably still just two—two layers each.
What are we at? Let’s see. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. I need one more, of course. Can I get one out of here? Yeah.
Well, that’s not a perfect one. We’ll keep that to the side, and we’ll get it out of the other piece. My hope here is that I’ll be able to—oops—get three layers, but that might be a bit much. So we’ll see. I also got out some sprinkles for the top. I figured that would look cute.
These are much easier to get in than the brownies. Will I be able to get an extra? Oh, that’s the one I’m using to cut them with. You guys, I love little cute desserts. These are just my happy place. And I feel like everybody loves little cute desserts better than like a big cake.
Okay, I am going to move forward without this last one just in case I need to cut more out. Let’s see if we can get just a little bit of icing in them. I’m going just do a thin layer.
Want to fit one more after that? I think we’ll be able to. I think so. Amazing how much easier these ones are than the brownies were.
Okay, so let’s see if this is this big and I put that in there. It’s going to be pushing it, but I think we can do it. Let’s try it on just one.
Can I squish it down to there? Okay. So I’m going to try to squish it to where the cake is like right at the top. I think that’ll work out. Maybe if I just use the small part of this.
How many do I need? Four. And three is seven. And so I have five, six, seven.
Okay. Okay. So the thought is then just one little last cutesy thing of icing, some sprinkles. Cute.
Now, it’s just going to squish the icing on top, which is fine, you guys. I can’t believe it again. What the heck? Those are so cute. Oh my goodness. All of them together. I’m thinking of like how I could organize them on here so they don’t look so spread apart. And then I’m going to make some cake balls with the remaining dough because all this plus those two little cakes. So going to clean this all up again. Then we’re going to make some cake pops.
Spilled Ice Cream Cake Balls
Have you guys ever made cake pops or cake balls before? I have once, and it was a big fail. I do know that a lot of people don’t use icing, but I feel like this icing is just kind of what makes this cake. So I think it’s important for this. I don’t know how much to use, though.
So I did set all the icing aside except for that little bit that was in here in just a cup. And I will add it little by little as we need it. Had I not taken that other little cake out too soon, we would have been able to make a frosted cake. But that’s okay.
Just get all this in here. I’m going to mix it without any extra icing first. And we’re going to add icing little by little until it gets to the consistency I like. I don’t know what I’m supposed to like. Okay, that is starting to come together, which is fantastic. I think I’m going to add a little bit of icing. Not that I think it’s going to need it, but because I think the flavor is necessary. So I’m going to just go with like that much.
All right. I think that’s as much as I’m going to put in just because I don’t want it to be too moist. I think that’s like as much moisture as it can handle. And then I think everyone says that they do them about an ounce-ish. So I’m wondering like how much is an ounce. But also I don’t think it necessarily matters how much an ounce is. It matters how big this is.
I got these little cones that I could put on the ends of them and have them be like little ice cream cones that have fallen over. I’ve seen that online a lot. So I think that’s going to really tell me how big I want them.
Okay, let’s try this size. What do we think? Will that be a good size? I think so. Gonna actually just scoop them first, and then I’ll roll them. Get a little bit of an assembly line going. This is working out so much better already than the last time I did it. I don’t remember what I did, but I definitely did something wrong.
All right, they are all rolled up now. I need to get these in the freezer for a little bit, probably do some dishes, and then we will come back to chocolate cover them.
All righty, these have frozen, and I’ve gotten some almond bark melted here. I’m going to just dip them and put them here and then kind of let them scooch a bit, and we’ll see how this goes. Stick this on. I guess you might have to hold it for a second and add some sprinkles.
Oh my gosh, that’s so cute. Like what? Oh my gosh. Getting confused on what I’m doing here. Cute. Oops. I wasn’t meaning to do that. Learning curve here.
Oh my gosh, I can’t even. Those are too cute.
Okay, I think I’m absolutely obsessed with these. These are the cutest little things. I’m sorry. What? These have got to be the cutest things I’ve ever seen. Oops, that one’s—well, you know, that’s fine. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I love it.
Okay, I’m going to do the rest. The last ones with—once I run out of the cones, I’m just going to do them just as little balls. We have a barbecue coming up in our neighborhood or a potluck, and so I’ll bring them out there. So I’ll just freeze them. But I’m going to get those finished, and then we’ll come back and look at everything we got. Oh my goodness.
Okay, here’s all these little balls. A few of these are cracking, so I wonder if perhaps the freezing the cake ball wasn’t really the right thing to do. I’ll have to look that up. It’s my first time doing it, so we shall see. I’m going to put all these ones though away for our little neighborhood event. And then these ones will just be ours, the ones that are cracking that have these on them. I don’t really want to put those in the freezer because then they’ll get like soggy.
Big Reveal
You guys, we did it. I cannot believe how stinking cute these all turned out. I got to say, these little ice cream cones are my favorite. And with these little like ice cream cone toppers. The flavors though, there’s chocolate inside the cone, which I think would have been better to be like a white chocolate. But flavors aside, I think these look super cute. I was able to get a lot of these little balls, I think 16 of them in my freezer for my neighborhood. And so that’s fantastic. I’m going to bring some with me to work. We are going to enjoy some plus all the leftovers of the brownie. But I think this was a huge success. I love little cutesy desserts. This is just like it’s my happy place. I’ve done a few other little desserts before. If you’re interested in seeing when I did some mini cakes, I’ll pop them here, and I’ll pop some other fun little desserts here. Thanks so much for being here. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you’re new and haven’t yet, please subscribe. I’d love to see you, and I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.
Taste Test
Okay. You know, I’ve been dying to try these. What I’m interested in though is why they’re kind of cracking. And what do I do here? Do I just like bite into it or…
It’s good.
