Time. I needed a few hours to create about 40 of them (also doing it for the first time, but still)
Preparation:
Create any cake pop dough (you can find a lot of recipes online, it doesn't matter which one you take). The ones I used (sorry, both german, google translate is your friend):
Make sure the finished dough has been sitting in the fridge for about an hour. If it's too warm, it will be difficult to work with.
Create the mushroom tops: For each, roll a bit of dough into a ball (should be a little bit wider than the halfed marshmallow). Gently press it onto the table to make it flat on one side. Don't squish it on top so it will be a nice round mushroom. Put into the fridge again, or if you are in a hurry, a shorter time in the freezer also works. Be careful to not cool them down too much: if they are too cold, they will split the coating if it cools too fast.
Slice the big marshmallows in half for the stems of the mushrooms
Slice mini marshmallows in about 2mm thick pieces (these will become the white dots on the mushrooms). You will need 4-5 slices per cake pop.
Melt the candy melts
Assembling:
Stick one marshmallow-half on a cake pop stick, leaving enough space for the shaped dough on top and then a little bit more
Dip the top of the stick into melted chocolate. This will make the dough hold to the stick better.
Stick the dough on the cake pop stick, on top of the marshmallow. Don't go all the way through, you don't want the stick to poke out on top of the dough. Make sure there is enough space between the dough and the marshmallow.
Dip the dough into the melted candy melts until fully covered. Make sure to not dip the marshmallow part! After dipping, slide the marshmallow up until it touches the coating.
Take 4-5 mini-marshmallow slices and distribute them on the melted chocolate. Create a nice dot pattern on your mushroom! If you prefer, you can also do this once the chocolate has cooled and is solid, but then you will need some sort of "glue" (sugar icing / molten chocolate) to make them stick.
Last but not least: the eyes. I used a tube of bought tube of chocolate-flavoured sugar icing which was easy to draw with. Paint two vertical lines on the marshmallow just below the mushroom top.
Let everything get solid, then put your masterpieces of geeky sweetness into the fridge to store. They will be good for about a week. I've also frozen some cake pops on occasion, that works too.
Enjoy!
If you have questions, just post a comment :)
Disclaimer: If you make them with alcohol (like me), tell people there's alcohol in it. I had people giving them to their children because they are cute. I forgot to mention that they contain quite some booze. The kids all survived and also liked it, but still :D!
