Cake Bites Adventure

So I have a particular additction to reading blogs. One of my favorites is Bakerella, which can be found here

She makes beautiful cake pops. Little bites of decorated cake deliciousness on a stick! YUM. So after her blog, okay numerous blogs, about Easter/Spring cake pops, I just had to make some myself. It's super simple (or so I thought) I decided to take a chaper out of her blog book and make a photo essay blog for you during my cake pop/bites endeavor. These cake bites were being made to take to the campus wide baby shower on Sunday. That's why they are decorated the way they are. I was going to try and make them like Bakerella did, the little bunnies and chicks and eggs, but I couldn't find all the decorating pieces she used.. so I went with simple cake bites, which I'm glad I did. I guess she has a food blog with hundreds of thousands of readers for a reason, while my blog is read by one or two people!!

Step one is to bake a cake. I didn't photograph this. We all know how to make a cake! Just a good 'ol regular Betty Crocker out of the box chocolate cake. Then the fun beings! You crumble the cake into a big bowl. I found my hands to be the best use of availible untensils.

Step #2 is to add a tub of frosting. I choose Betty Crocker whipped Butter Cream. Which I must admit may not have been the best choice. I'll talk more about that later. Perhaps choosing a frosting that is the same flavor as your cake with ease some of the problem I experienced with this step.

Then you mix. And mix, and oh yeah... mix

Next you take the wonderful cake mess and turn it into beautiful little balls! It was easier, but messier than I though. I used a cookie scoop to get even sized ball, and since Hubby was actually the one doing the scooping I didn't get even sized, but it's the thought that counds right? Should have just used my hands, but oh well! I did get 42 wonderful cake bites.
Put the cake bites into the freezer so they will harden up a bit and be easier to work with. The heat from my hands made the balls sticky and soft, hard to work with for the next step. So I choose the deep freeze, which Bakerella said for 5 min. I would say for more like 15 minutes. 5 minutes just gave them a little chill, not really any hardening factor.

While the cake bites stiffen up, I moved onto the coating. I used good old candy melts in white and yellow. They melt so nice and easy in the microwave, even stupid microwaves like mine can do it! (although my stupid microwave required that I sit and watch them as they melt and constantly be checking on them.. it dosen't have a 50% power, what it thinks is 50% power to to nuke the food 100% for 10 seconds, then just spin your food for 10 seconds, then nuke it again at 100% for 10 seconds.. you get the picture. Piece of junk.) I also used this time to prep my candy sugar topping. I had bought the pink one, planning on using it on the easter eggs, but didn't have blue. So I made some blue with some plain white sugar and two drops of blue food coloring. While it wasn't the large crystals like the pink, it still did the trick I was looking for. Gotta have pink and blue for the babies!

Bakerella suggests melting your candies in a narrow, deep dish, so that you can submurge your cake bite into the melted goo and not have to be rolling it around. I should have listened. While I did get the desired effect I wanted.. or well sorta (see the next couple pictures and the little bits of chocolate cake that peek out from the candy coating). I also got lots of little pieces of chocolate cake "floaties" in my pure white candy coating. So it turned into not so pure white.. but it still did the trick, it's not like these are gonna be eggs or anything!
So goes the dipping, and the drizzling. I found it easier (as suggested) to submurge the ball, then to take the spoon and spoon more coating over top of it. The less the spoon touches the balls, the less cake came off. Amazing!
And this is a finished, and decorated cake bite! I think it's pretty cute. Who wouldn't want to gobble up this wonderful little bite of delicious?? I admit it does look like a truffle, and I think a lot of people at the party thought that's what they were until they bit into them!
I have to tell you that while I was doing all the baking and coating, my wonderful husband was doing the sugar sprinkling and the pictures. I give him a big thumbs up for this one.. look at the way he captured the grains of sugar falling to thier new home atop a beautifully coated cake bite. The movement... the detail... the wonder. Way to go hunna. Great photography, and even greater sugar sprinkling! You get an A+!
And here they are. Finished product. While they aren't as cute as Bakerella's beautiful little eggs and chicks and bunnies... I think they are cute and I'm happy with them. They were a big hit at the party. And now I know how to make them and can say I have! Yah to me.
I will say that I did a good job. I will also say this. I have some things I would change. First off when I first bit into the cake bite, I guess I was expecting cake... right? Spoungy, soft, tasty chocolate cake. What I got was a cross between grainy frosting and mushy cake. When you mix frosting with little bits of cake, you don't get the texture of a frosted cake. Duh. But after popping a few of these little wonders into my mouth, I found that you get over that and they taste pretty good. It is cake and frosting after all.. I mean, can that be bad? Perhaps using a little less frosting, not the entire can, would ease this situation.
Secondly I would change the size. Maybe a little bit smaller. More of a two bite, or a pop in your mouth kind of deal. These were a little big and little rich for me. It was a 3-4 bite undertaking.
And thirdly I would use the same flavor of cake and frosting. Not that the butter cream and chocolate wouldn't be wonderful is thier own respective traditional cake roles, but as cake bites on a combined effort, butter cream just took over, and chocolate sat in the back seat for the ride. I was disappointed at the lack of choclate taste. I don't eat chocolate often, but when I do, I want CHOCOLATE taste.. in my face taste... not backseat to buttercream taste.

So I have learned some things. I also think it would be much easier to do these on sticks like Bakerella does. Getting an even coat would be easier. Anyways.

This food blog has been fun. Now that I spent 40 miutes trying to figure out how to get pictures in here! So maybe I'll do it again.. perhaps bread :) Yeah right! I'm a mom of 2 children under 2, like I have time to make bread.. maybe someday again.

From me to you, enjoy your cake bites and check out Bakerella here!