Angry Birds Cake Pops

I made these angry birds cake pops yesterday for my daughter's 8th birthday party. I'm posting them in the hopes that you will learn from my mistakes (if I can keep just one person from going through what I went through, it will all have been worth it). Actually, not even close. I'd have to keep more like 10 people from repeating this fiasco to make it seem remotely worth it. Even then, I'm not so sure. Here's the whole pathetic story:
 
First of all, these took me two full days, so if you have a life, I recommend you order cupcakes from the local bakery. I spent several hours of the first day shaping beaks, feathers and pig's ears from colored fondant. I also baked the cake, which I burned, so then I went to the store for more eggs and baked another cake. Then I had the brilliant idea to use nutella instead of frosting. But after shaping all the balls, triangles and ovals and dipping the first round in the candy melts, I realized the pops were dripping oil. I assumed it was hazelnut oil from the nutella and that I'd made a horrible mistake. So I threw out the entire batch. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried a little at this point because I was exhausted and the realization that I had to start from scratch and bake a third cake made me feel defeated to say the least. Actually, I am a little ashamed, because after all, we're talking about cake pops here.

Anyway, I forged ahead and baked yet another cake and used chocolate frosting this time. After shaping everything yet again, I began the dipping process for the second time. And those effing cake pops were still dripping oil! At this point I wanted to curl up in the fetal position under the covers with a pint of Ben & Jerrys. This time I assumed it was the candy melts. I've never used those before (only melted chocolate), so all things being equal, I figured that was the problem. Which meant I would just have to work with it the best I could. So I struggled for hours (especially with the green, which was very clumpy and uncooperative and basically had to get spackled on to each pop by hand) and eventually I learned to add a little coconut oil to help thin out the melts. Of course that didn't help with the drippy oil problem, but it got the pops coated. Eventually.

Now this next part is just a stunning example of sheer stupidity. I wanted to keep the cake pops cool at the party, so I tried to stuff the entire stand into a cooler bag. In my defense, it's a huge cooler bag. But of course that went horribly wrong and by the time I got it out of there, there were stray beaks, ears and feathers scattered across the bottom of the cooler. Yes, I could have melted more candy melts and reattached them, but that was my breaking point, so I officially gave up and deemed them good enough. I figured there were enough cute ones in the front still showing. So I guess this is a story of both perseverance and knowing when you've been beaten by cake pops.

Side note: I didn't post the recipe because I've made cake pops and posted them before. The only things I did differently here were using store-bought fondant (Satin Ice) and candy eyeballs for decorations and candy melts for coating (I used m&m's for the snouts and piped the orange coating/dark chocolate for eyebrows). I didn't document the whole process with photos because I was too busy wishing I was dead to pick up the camera.
.