Treat yourself to these Vegan Cake Pops, vegan vanilla cake balls dipped in melted chocolate! They’re a delicious two-bite treat everyone loves and are fun to customize with different flavors and decorations.
Satisfy your sweet tooth with more delicious treats, like these Funfetti Vegan Cupcakes, No Bake Mini Cheesecakes, Vegan Lofthouse Cookies, and Vegan Sugar Cookie Bars.
Homemade vegan vanilla cake and buttercream frosting are mixed together and rolled into balls before being dipped into melted chocolate. You’ll love making these fun and easy treats almost as much as eating them!
Why you’ll love this easy vegan cake pops recipe
- An easy 2-bite treat – If you can make a simple vegan cake and icing, you’ll have no problem putting these vegan cake pops together.
- Endless flavor and decoration options – Think of this cake pop recipe as a blank canvas. You can swap the vanilla cake for chocolate, red velvet, or yellow cake, play with the flavors in the frosting, or sprinkle crushed nuts or coconut on top for decoration. Anything goes!
- Perfect for parties and gifting – Cake pops come to the rescue when you don’t want to fuss with a homemade cake for the party. There’s no slicing or a ton of dishes to clean after everyone’s done eating! And because they travel so well, they make for fantastic edible gifts to give to your family and friends.
- The best way to use up leftover cake – Substitute the homemade cake and icing in this recipe for the leftover cake already in your fridge. Cake pops with leftover cake are just as good as ones made with homemade cake and you get to cut down on the prep time, too!
How to make vegan cake pops
Bake the vegan vanilla cake, then set it aside to fully cool. It’s best to make the cake the day before you make the cake pops so it has lots of time to cool to room temperature.
The next day, make the frosting by beating the vegan butter with a mixer until it’s creamy. Add in the powdered sugar, soy milk, and vanilla, then beat again until you have a smooth and creamy frosting.
Crumble the cooled cake into the bowl with the frosting; and really crumble it well, you don’t want a lot of large chunks. With the mixer on low speed, beat to combine until the mixture is crumbly.
Scoop 1 tablespoon of the icing-cake mixture at a time and roll into balls. Place them on a prepared baking sheet and let them chill in the freezer.
Take them out after 30 minutes, re-roll to smooth out the edges, then place them back in the freezer for another 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, melt the regular chocolate chips or white chocolate chips with a little vegetable oil in the microwave or a double boiler. Don’t use too big a bowl; use a container that will be good for dipping, like my glass measuring cup below. I also melted half the chocolate/oil at a time to keep it melty while I dipped.
Customize with food coloring: Add a drop or two of the gel food coloring of your choice to all or portions of the melted white chocolate if you want your cake pops to have fun colors. This is my favorite set of vegan-friendly food dye from Sweetapolita (P.S. I get ALL my sprinkles there!).
Remove a few vegan cake balls from the freezer. Stick each lollipop stick into the melted chocolate coating before sticking them into the cake balls. Dip the balls in the melted chocolate until they’re fully coated. Let the excess drip off before decorating and placing them upright to set.
I got a cake pop stand, but you can also poke holes in a cardboard box to let them dry, like Sally did!
Always reinforce the lollipop sticks. By dipping the lollipop sticks into the melted chocolate before the cake balls, you’re essentially gluing the balls to the sticks. Without this reinforcement, the balls would likely slide off the sticks.
Once the chocolate has hardened and is completely dry, serve the cake pops or wrap them up for gifting. Enjoy!
More cake pop flavors
You can make vegan cake pops with almost any vegan cake or customize the flavors with extracts. Here are a few of my favorite flavors that you can experiment with:
- Red velvet cake pops: Swap the cake in this recipe for my Vegan Red Velvet Cake or Cupcakes and the frosting for my Cream Cheese Frosting.
- Chocolate cake pops: Use my best-ever Vegan Chocolate Cake to make vegan chocolate cake pops. Vanilla or chocolate buttercream frosting will do. Substitute regular chocolate chips for white.
- Lemon cake pops: Keep the recipe the same but add 1 to 2 teaspoons of lemon zest and 1 teaspoon of lemon extract to the cake and frosting.
- Peppermint cake pops: Again, the recipe stays the same, but you’ll add 1 teaspoon of peppermint extract to the cake and decorate the cake pops with candy cane pieces.
- Gluten free cake pops: Simply make the cake in the recipe with gluten free all purpose flour.
- Do you have leftover cake already in the fridge? Use it instead! After mixing it into crumbles, roll, freeze, and dunk the leftover cake balls as normal.
Frequently asked questions
You can use sprinkles, crushed nuts, coconut flakes, edible flowers, crushed candy canes, cookie crumbs, etc. There are endless options!
The cake pops need to chill in the freezer for at least 1 hour before they’re dipped in chocolate. The colder they are, the more firm they’ll be, which makes dipping them a breeze.
Your cake pops will be crumbly or fall apart in the melted chocolate if you don’t chill them long enough. It’s always best to freeze for 30 minutes, re-roll them into perfect circles, and then chill for another 30 minutes. This ensures that they stay nice and firm.
Yes, you can make the cake, icing, or cake balls up to 1 month in advance. Wrap the cake in plastic, keep the icing in an airtight container. Transfer the solid cake balls to a ziplock bag. Store everything in the freezer until it’s time to make the cake pops.
Store the candy-coated cake pops in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. They also freeze well in an airtight container or ziplock bag.
Vegan Cake Pops
Equipment
Ingredients
Vanilla Cake
- 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup canola oil
- 3/4 cup unsweetened soy milk or almond, oat, coconut
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Frosting
- 1/2 cup vegan butter softened to room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1-2 tablespoons unsweetened soy milk
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Coating
- 32 ounces vegan white chocolate chips or regular vegan chocolate chips
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or refined coconut oil
- vegan friendly sprinkles
Instructions
Make the cake and let cool
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a round 8-inch cake pan.
- In a large bowl, add the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt and sugar. Whisk well to combine. To the bowl with the dry ingredients, pour in the oil, soy milk, apple cider vinegar and vanilla. Mix with a large spoon until just combined.
- Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. let the cake cool all the way before proceeding with the recipe. I like to make it the night before I make cake pops.
Make the frosting and cake balls
- With a handheld or stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the vegan butter until creamy, about 2-3 minutes. Now add the powdered sugar, soy milk and vanilla and beat until smooth and creamy, for about 3 minutes.
- Once the cake has cooled, crumble it into the bowl with the frosting. Turn the mixer on low speed and beat to combine, scraping the bottom and sides as needed. It should resemble crumbles.
- Scoop 1 tablespoon of the mixture at a time and roll into balls (they won't be perfectly round since the mixture is so soft). Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and chill in the freezer for 30 minutes. Take them out and re-roll, to smooth them out into more perfect circles. Place the pan back in the freezer for 30 more minutes.
Coat the balls and finish
- Melt half of the chocolate of your choice with half the vegetable oil in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until melted and smooth. Or melt in a double boiler on the stovetop. I like to do this in a glass measuring cup for easy dipping, not a large shallow bowl.
- Remove a few cake balls at a time (you want them to be very cold when you dip them in chocolate). Dip a lollipop stick about 1/2 inch into the chocolate coating, then push it halfway through the cake ball. Dip the ball into the chocolate until completely coated. When you are nearly out of melted chocolate, melt the other half of chocolate and oil (I do half at a time because it starts to firm up after awhile).
- Gently tap the stick against the bowl to let any excess chocolate come off. Decorate with sprinkles, if desired and place upright to set. You can use a box with tiny holes poked in it, or a stand meant for drying cake pops.
- Let them set and dry, then serve. You can also wrap them for gifting. They will keep for 1 week in the refrigerator, and they freeze perfectly as well.
Notes
- Gluten free? Substitute gluten free all purpose flour in the cake.
- Flavor variations – Make them lemon by adding some lemon zest and lemon extract to the cake and frosting. Or peppermint by adding peppermint extract to the cake and white chocolate coating, and sprinkle candy cane pieces on top. See post above for even more ideas.
Hello! How would store bought frosting do instead of homemade? Cant wait to make these as holiday gifts.
That should work fine! Enjoy!
Hey Nora – Megan again (I had left a review earlier today saying that they didn’t work for me). Just realised that my disappointed 1 star rating would pull down your whole 5 star review average, so you don’t need to publish that comment. I’m a big supporter of your work.
Oh, it’s okay! I’m sorry they didn’t work out for you. Wish I knew what happened! Thanks for usually enjoying my recipes though! 🙂
I was so excited about these, and normally find your recipes very reliable, but they were a complete disaster! The cake tasted good, but once mixed with the icing I think something about the moisture must have been off; when they defrosted, they were so wet, they just slid off the sticks. The measurements were all correct as I weighed them by the gram. All went in the compost 🙁 Not sure what went wrong!
Also, I found that if I made ‘regular’ size cake pops, i.e., 2 bites in total, they made 18 — not 32. Using a literal tbsp measurement meant that they were too small. And the 32oz of melted chocolate was way too much; I probably only used 1/3 of it.
I’m sorry to hear they didn’t work out for you! I’m not sure what happened, I’ve made these as written many times without issue (though they are a little fussy, especially when coating with the chocolate). I wonder what brand of butter you used, and if that could have made your dough too wet for some reason, or perhaps your measurements were wrong somewhere? Because you didn’t get as many cake balls as me (using a tablespoon), it really makes me wonder if something was off with your measurements. And I definitely use nearly all of the melted chocolate, not 1/3rd, so something is off here.
Made these for my daughter’s preschool, for Halloween. They turned out absolutely amazing. Got lots of complements 😊🙏
How fun! I’m glad the cake pops were a hit! Thanks for your awesome review and feedback!
Can I use regular almond milk, will I have to adjust the sugar?
You can, I would not adjust the sugar but you could reduce it just a little bit if you want.
Hi Nora,
Can all the ingredients be cut in half to make just have the amount of cake pops?
Yes, I don’t see why not. Enjoy!
Can I make the frosting with just a hand mixer instead of a stand mixer?
Yes, you can use a hand mixer. Enjoy!
Can I use avocado oil instead of the vegetable and canola oil?
Yep!
Is it ok to do this recipe in just a regular cake pop maker?
I’m sure you could bake the cake in this recipe in a cake pop maker, but it hasn’t been tested so I’m not sure if it would work or not.
When I saw this recipe posted I knew that I had to make them right away! I added (vegan) Sweetapolita Bubble Gum Pink food coloring to the cake/frosting mix and then decorated with red, pink, and purple Sweetapolita vegan sprinkles for extra fun! The cake pops are DELICIOUS!
Your cake pops sound beautiful! Thanks for sharing your stellar review and feedback!
Hello is the mils and vinegar mixed together or poured seperate
You don’t have to mix them together first, you can just pour them both in, it works great.
Wow! I didn’t want my daughter to feel left out of the Valentine’s Day celebration in her kindergarten class and the teacher was planning on having cake pops for the kids. I found these and honestly laughed when Nora said if you can make cake, you can make cake pops, but these turned out great!!! These are really do-able!!!
How fun for your daughter! Thanks for your fabulous review and feedback!
In the Frosting section, when I convert the butter measurements to metric it converts 1/2 C of butter to 56 g. Should it be 113 g?
Oh yes, it should, I just fixed that. Sorry about that!
Can I use your vegan chocolate for the balls?
Do you mean my vegan white chocolate recipe? Yes, you can.
I meant to say your chocolate vegan cake (the famous one). Would that one work?
Yes, I think it will work well!
Hi Nora,
You mention melting half the chocolate. What do you do with the other half? Thanks 🙂
Woops! Thanks for catching that Cindy. I just melt half at a time, because if you melt it all at once, it takes quite a while to dip all the balls, and the chocolate will start to firm up at some point. It just makes it smoother to melt half at a time, as you go. Hope that makes sense! I’ve updated the instructions to reflect this. Thank you and hope you enjoy!
I am wondering if I can make these with brownies instead of cake…What do you think? Or would that be an entirely different idea?
Yes, I’m sure brownies would work well!
Do you think melted vegan butter can be subbed for canola oil? I don’t have any on hand.
Yes, that should work well. Enjoy!