the making of: cake balls

Way back in March when Anthony's birthday rolled around he wanted to take in a treat to his class. As I was browsing around online I saw some awesome cake pops made by Bakerella. So I asked him if he'd like to take something similar, of course he said yes. I asked his teacher if it would be ok and to get a count of how many kids were in his class. Unfortunately the school has a no-homemade food policy.

Fast forward to last week when his coach and I were talking about their end of season party. She mentioned she was going to buy a cake, and I thought why. lol Later I suggested that we could make some cake balls for their party, I had been looking for a reason to make them. She took me up on the offer and so we made our first test batch going off of Bakerella's directions. While it turned out ok, I wasn't sure what the consistency of the cake balls were supposed to be so I was unsure whether or not they were even right. So, we ran some errands earlier in the week and stopped in at Starbucks really fast so that I could get a frappucino. Of course the kids wanted something, but when I pulled up to order I figured we could justify the expense of the cake pops from there as market research. hahaha So, I got two, the birthday cake and the tiramisu. They were both good, and I immediately knew that while the ones we made weren't bad, I had used too much frosting. Anthony claimed that the version we made was WAY better, but that he liked the ones from Starbucks also.

The day of their end of season party is tomorrow. We had purchased new yellow cake mix and cream cheese frosting to try for the next batch and I got the cake baked yesterday. Today I crumbled it and mixed it in with the frosting as per the directions on The Pioneer Woman's site.

From the making of: cake balls

I liked that she included pictures of the steps so I knew whether or not I was doing it correctly. As I was gathering the links for this post I noticed that she has a great, full of photos, tutorial of Bakerella's way of making them. Which includes some really good tips and tricks for the last step, dipping them in chocolate. I wish I had a melon baller, but I didn't, so I made them all by hand. If these turn out I'm definitely investing in one. Then I made some room for them in the deep freezer and let them chill.

We ran into Michael's for some green candy chips. I couldn't believe that the commissary didn't sell any chocolate bark or something similar to melt and use as a coating. We decided on green since that is the color of Anthony's team jerseys this season.





I think I needed another bag of candy chips, and I should have left 1/2 the batch in the freezer until I was ready for them. It took me awhile to get them done, so by the time I got to the last half they weren't quite so frozen and some of the cake was left behind in the melted candy coating. I am definitely going to do this again, probably for Bella's birthday (she's 11 months today!?!).