Cake Pops--first attempt

I'm sure most of you have seen bakerella's blog. If you haven't, you really should check it out. And she makes these adorable cake pops. I mean, seriously. Could they be any cuter? Well, maybe these could. Or these. Or these.
But anyway.
I was under no delusions that I'd end up making something like this. But I did think I could manage a round-ish cake pop with some green-tinted candy coating for a St. Patrick's Day party tomorrow.

I should point out that I don't generally use those candy melt things. If I did, I might have consulted someone with more knowledge in this area before trying this.

I think I did two things wrong:
1. I made the cake the "vegan" way, with a can of soda instead of eggs, oil, water, etc. I did this because someone at the party is allergic to eggs, and it's easy. But I think perhaps that changes the texture of the cake enough to make the balls too soft, even after a few hours in the freezer.

2. I had no clue what I was doing with the candy melts, so I was having to add shortening, etc. to fix the consistency. I expected to be able to dip and be done, but that is not the way this worked for me at all. It was too thick, and more than one cake pop lost it's "pop" because of it. In the end, I found that spreading on the candy coating worked best.
I got a few good ones,


and a few not-so-good ones.
They'll all taste fine. But I don't know if I'll do cake pops again. Cake balls, sure. Pops? We'll see.