Are cake pops the new cup cakes?

A US-themed stand at a London Coffee Festival inspired a Welsh bakery to launch US-style chocolate cake pops for the UK's coffee shops and retail outlets.

A hit in the US for some years, cake pops are balls of cake dipped in chocolate and individually decorated on a stick so that they can be eaten like a lollipop.

Crickhowell-based Clam's Cakes has developed two varieties of cake pop: one dark chocolate cake decorated with Smarties and one white chocolate cake decorated with Hundreds and Thousands.

It took the baker two months to perfect the manufacturing process but sales director Lewis Phillips says the investment has proved worthwhile, as trials at coffee outlets in Cardiff, Birmingham, Bristol and Hereford have convinced him that they will sell.

"We are one of the first bakeries in the UK to make cake pops for the foodservice sector and the response to the taste trials has been fantastic," he said. "We plan to supply them to our existing customers across the UK and are confident they will open up new markets for our growing business.

"If they take off in the same way that cup cakes did, then they are going to be huge in the grab and go market in the UK. Based on our production of 1,000 loaf cakes a week, we could be making 15,000 cake pops a week, which will create new jobs within the company."

Contact: Clams Cakes