Saturday, August 7, 2010

How not to make cake balls

The other day I was drunk got the crazy idea to do a fun baking project with the kids. I went rummaging through the pantry and found a cake mix and some icing. A ha! We'd make cake balls! So here's the low down on how to them. 


 Remove jewelry. You'll thank me!



Tuck assistant 0.5 into his highchair and give him a toy. 



Bake a cake and let it cool just a little bit. You'll need to have a large mixing bowl and spoons ready also. If you want to keep your sanity, stop here. Just ice the cake and call it a day!



Have assistant 1 (dressed in their "baking outfit") go crazy on the cake with a wooden spoon. You want to get it nice and smashed. 



Put the cake crumbs into the large bowl and mix in a half of a container of frosting. You want the cake moist and sticky but not gooey or your balls will taste under cooked. 



You're supposed to roll your balls by hand, but I cheated and used a cookie dough spooner thingy.



Then you put all of your balls into a cake pan or on a baking sheet so you can freeze them You want them firm so you can cover them easily, but not frozen.



Uh oh! Assistant 0.5 needs some attention too!



Ahhhh, much better!



While your balls are in the freezer gather your decorating supplies. We used candy wafers but chocolate chips would work too. We also used sprinkles colored sugar. 



Melt your candy wafers or chocolate chips in the microwave. But follow the destructions directions and don't do what I did and burn them. Yuck! And if you do, throw it out and make a new batch. 



Get some plastic forks and break the center tines off. This will make for nice dipping forks. Plus you get to laugh because your forks look like Batman!



Next you use your forks to dip the cake balls into your coating of choice. I found it easiest to do this myself. Distract assistant 1 by letting them wash your dishes in the sink. 



When that doesn't last long let them get into your decorating sprinkles. What's a little sugar, right? Try not to let them eat too many though because you do need some sprinkles to decorate your cake balls with. 



In theory you'll have beautifully covered balls of cake when all is said and done. However, this is all we got. I was having a hard time getting the wafers to melt nice and smooth and I think the cake balls were too cold because the candy wouldn't stay melted and just clumped as soon as I dropped the balls in. So we gave up and Kaelin ate the rest of the balls straight from the freezer sans coating. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that looks like such a fun project! i have not braved the idea of letting abbi cook with me yet. we have just started finger painting and that gets messy enough :)