Grad Cap Pops inspired by Bakerella

I saw this post at Bakerella and was inspired to make my own version.  I used Nestle Milk Choc chips, Keebler Deluxe Grahams, mini Reeses PB cups, Wilton Lolly Pop Sticks (tried the popsicle sticks she mentioned in her blog but they kept splitting the pb cups), and Air Heads Xtreme Sweetly Sour Belts.  I did not make them alone.  As usual, I dragged DH, DD, and DS into it!  They were very helpful.  Jim had to make an emergency run to the store as I miscalculated the quantities needed.  In the end, we made over 100 of these delicious treats for the graduation celebration at church. 

We melted the chocolate in my Wilton chocolate melter.  It melts the chips quickly, turn it to warm and they stay melted and ready to use as our glue.  Great tool!  Hannah cut up the Sweetly Sour Belts for the tassles.  More people asked how we made the tassles than most anything else.

It was time consuming to make them since it was our first time.  I could do it more quickly now that we have done it once.  We developed an assembly line.  I certainly would calculate my quantities better.  LOL!  Only used less than 1/2 bag of milk chocolate chips.  Jim bought 4 bags.  Needed many more cookies.  Keebler has about 19-20 cookies in a package.  I only had one package to start and ended up using 3 more packages.  Only needed 1 package of Air Heads to make 120+ tassles.  I had bought 3.  Johnson volunteered to eat all of the extra ones.  I would make room in the refrigerator and freezer ahead of time so we would not have to scramble for space.  Lastly I would now have enough Styrofoam to poke in the finished products so DH wouldn't have to make a late run to the store.     

Many commented on how cute and delicious they were so I consider it a good use of our time to make them.  The point was to help make the kids celebrating their graduation feel special...loved by all of us at church.  I hope it did a little...they are great kids.   

<^..^>Lori