Cake Balls

What do you do when a cake falls apart like this one did?

(This post is about a month late which you probably noticed based on the date of the crumbled cake post - sorry!)

You can either use it as an excuse to eat it as is, or make cake balls! Since I had to have something to take to a party anyway and I already had the broken cake and leftover frosting from a few cakes I had done recently; I opted to give cake balls another try.

This time I was going to try and make a few cake pops from Bakerella's new book to go with some cupcakes I was making for a baby shower that weekend (post to come soon) and use the rest as plain cake balls for the party we were going to; but I was having some issues and running low on time, so I turned them all into cake balls.

You can find detailed instructions, and much prettier versions of cake balls and cake pops, on Bakerella's web site or you can view my first attempt here.

Here's a quick overview:
Basically, you crumble up a baked cake and mix in frosting. This time I used leftover 'Extra Special Buttercream' instead of the canned frosting. Then form the cake/icing mixture into balls and refrigerate or freeze for the required amount of time. Melt your chocolate and/or candy coating according to package directions. This time I used milk chocolate, white chocolate and peanut butter candy coating. Dip the balls into the melted chocolate/coating and let set. Then refrigerate until ready to serve.

If you don't care what they look like, which obviously I didn't this time, it's a pretty easy and fast solution to a crumbled cake. If you do want to make them look better or try any of Bakerella's cake pops, you'll need a lot more time and attention to detail.

These were pretty popular at the party, which was great because I didn't want to have to bring any home!

Enjoy!

Summer Cupcake Series VII

It is week VII of the Summer Cupcake Series, if you missed the first six weeks you can catch up with the links below:

Week I - Tropical Cupcakes
Week II - Watermelon Cupcakes
Week III - Cupcake Cones
Week IV - Grass Cupcakes
Week V – Glazed Gluten Free Lemon Cupcakes
Week VI – Berry Pie Cupcakes from Oprah.com

Following in the direction of last week’s post, I am pointing you over to one of my absolute favorite bloggers for the cutest Hawaiian cupcakes ever! Bakerella posted these cupcakes last week and I adore them! The ‘sand’ topping, the cute little 'Aloha' signs, and most impressive of all…the leis made out of individual fondant flowers.

Picture from Bakerella.com

I’m contemplating whether I have enough time to make these for an upcoming event. But considering how busy things have been over the last couple of weeks I should probably choose to make something that doesn’t involve hundreds of mini fondant flowers, just to be on the safe side.

I LOVE Bakerella, her creations are amazing and inspiring and she introduced me to Pioneer Woman (well to PW’s site, so it was more of a virtual introduction than a ‘Hey have you met Pioneer Woman? Pioneer Woman this is Chelle.’) This wouldn’t have really been possible anyway since neither one of them has any idea who I am. Although I did meet Pioneer Woman, but she also met 500 other people that night so it’s not likely she remembers me. Maybe I’ll get to meet Bakerella at a book signing just like I met Pioneer Woman, because guess what?

Bakerella has a book coming out next month!!! Woo Hoo! I can’t wait! You can learn about her book here. She hasn’t said yet, but I hope she does a booking signing tour. If not, maybe I’ll invite both of them to the wedding…I wonder if they would come or if they’d think I was crazy and get a restraining order???

Anyway…if you haven’t been to Bakerella’s site you must visit it ASAP.

You can find more pictures, decorating instructions, and the yummy recipe all at this URL: http://www.bakerella.com/lei-time/

Enjoy!

‘You Can’t Hurry Love’…And You Can't Hurry Cupcake Pops

It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this…partly due to life being a bit busy, but probably the real underlying reason is I didn’t want to dissect all the things that went so wrong with my cupcake pops. As I mentioned in the Sweet Treat Party post, they didn’t really turn out like I’d hoped and definitely not anywhere even remotely as good as Bakerella’s.

So what happened?

I was rushing, I knew it while I was making them, but I didn’t think it would matter…WRONG. I think it did matter, a lot. Cupcake pops require much more time and attention than I had to give that day.

My biggest piece of advice, if you try to make cupcake pops, allow A LOT of time and TLC.

Primarily, do not try to save time by cutting back the refrigerator and/or freezer time. I think Bakerella recommends at least a few hours in the refrigerator (or approximately 15 minutes in the freezer) after making the cake balls AND after forming the cake balls into any desired shapes before covering in chocolate or candy coating.

Cake Balls

I did not have room in my freezer, so I stuck them in the refrigerator. But I did not have multiple hours. I think I had the cake balls in the refrigerator about an hour maybe a little more.

That part probably wasn’t as important as the refrigerator/freezer time after shaping the balls into cupcake pops and hearts, which was definitely less than an hour. I think the shorter time did not allow them to set as much as they should have and hence made dipping/covering them with the chocolate and candy coating more difficult.

On cake pops that require more than one color of chocolate/candy coating, I tried to let the first color set before applying the second (for example, I tried to do the bottom of the cupcakes before the top). Covering the bottom of the cupcakes wasn’t that bad. I dipped the bottom into the chocolate stuck in the stick and then placed the cupcake pop upside down on wax paper to set.

The tops were a completely different story :(

I didn’t have time to hold them and let the candy coating set so I just placed each stick in a Styrofoam block…but then the color on the top dripped down over the bottom.

Sad

I also had planned to put the heart-shaped cake bites on sticks, but the sticks didn’t really work with the heart size and/or shape I used, so I really ended up with heart-shaped cake bites rather than cake pops like I originally wanted.

I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to spend enough time and attention on each one, so I just focused on trying to get them all covered in some manner.

Very Sad

The majority were not very cute or pretty.

The good news though, is that they were a hit because they tasted yummy. So it wasn’t a complete loss.

Sweet Treat Party

Saturday I hosted a casual little gathering for Valentine’s Day…actually it was really more of an excuse to get some girls together and of course to bake!

I called it a ‘Sweet Treat Party’ and there were definitely plenty of sweets…

Cupcakes
Cookies
More cookies
Cupcake pops/cake bites
Candy

It’s a good thing I ran out of time to make the other couple of recipes I was considering.

Don’t worry I did have a fruit tray, a veggie tray and some chips and salsa to balance out the sugar ;)

Cupcakes
I used a white cake mix and canned frosting (white and strawberry) to save myself some time. I played around with a few different decorating techniques with the frosting and a variety of sprinkles.

Look this one matches the napkin!

This one was a little crazy, but was a hit with the 2 ½ year old little boy.

Here are the rest:

Cookies
I had two types of cookies: Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Cookies (click here for more details) and Coconut Macaroons.

The coconut macaroons are becoming very popular. Every time I make these there is another loyal follower. These really are not as difficult as they appear to be, I’ll post the recipe later this week.

Coconut Macaroons and Cupcakes

Cupcake Pops/Cake Bites
I have an even deeper awe, appreciation and respect for Bakerella now. These are a bit more complicated and take a bit more TLC than I had originally thought. I was very rushed and did not allot them as much time as I should have and hence they did not look nearly as good as Bakerella’s. I’ll post more on my experience with cake pops later and re-cap what I think I could do better next time. The good news is that even though they didn’t look that great, my friends thought they were delicious.

A few of the Cupcake Pops that even came close to turning out correctly.

The rest of the Cupcake Pops that didn't even make it to 'Pop' status...they all look so very sad.

All in all, it was a fun and relaxing afternoon visiting with friends and it was exactly what I needed.

Thanks girls!