Cake Balls: A Learning Experience

So I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but as much as I loved how William's birthday cake turned out, I hated how much leftover cake I had sitting in my house.

Although the pan I baked the cake on was smaller than the one it is currently on, it was still a rectangular pan (two rectangular pans, actually, because it was a double-layer cake). Which meant I had quite a bit of scraps leftover after cutting the rectangles down to a three

Since most of the scraps were a mess and--in my opinion--not worthy of being served to others, I racked my brain for something to do with them because wasting them seemed like a shame but I certainly didn't need to eat them all myself (or feed them to the boys). So, in a moment of brilliance (or so I thought), the idea to make cake balls (or cake pops or cake truffles or whatever you want to call them) was born. While it was a good idea in theory, the final product was less than stellar (and that's being kind).



I know it is a terrible photograph, but trust me--there was not really anything I could have done with the lighting or staging or anything that would have made those little balls look appetizing. However, they were still very much edible (and reasonably tasty) so I allowed Darrell to take them to work (although I made him promise to tell his new coworkers that these were by no means representative of what I normally bake and that I promised to make something much better to send with him soon). Here's a few things I learned from this "experiment":

• Since I was using homemade cake and frosting, I couldn't really follow the standard recipe of "bake a 9x13 cake, crumble, and mix with a can of frosting". So I kind of kept mixing a little cake with a little frosting until I got a consistency that I could shape into balls. However, I'm pretty sure the frosting to cake ratio was too high because they ended up being a little on the sticky side (even after freezing) and they were definitely plenty sweet. I wish that I would have had some practice making these per an actual recipe so I would have known what consistency to shoot for.
• I stacked the cake layers before I cut out the three, so most of my "scraps" included some of the chocolate frosting that I used between the layers. Crumble that up with the yellow cake and green buttercream icing and you get an ugly mess. And since my cake balls were a little too big to be bite-sized, you were pretty much guaranteed a look at the (pretty unappetizing) inside. Next time I might consider adding some food coloring to the mixture so everything is at least a uniform color.
• In order to make the balls easier to dip, you are supposed to freeze them. And I know that lots of people freeze them with cute little straws so you can do fancy little displays with them to serve. Well, I didn't care about that, so I just went without, thinking that I wouldn't have an issue dipping them because I've been dipping stuff in almond bark for years and have a pretty good system figured out. Except I failed to consider that I'd be dipping cold cake balls into warm almond bark, and that it wouldn't quite work the same as the room temperature stuff I normally dip. As you can see from the picture, the coating is incredibly sloppy and terribly uneven. Next time I'd definitely consider using toothpicks or something similar to aid in the dipping process.
• I had planned to put some fun sprinkles on them to dress them up a little, but the coating was starting to harden almost immediately (see above note on cold cake balls plus warm coating), and I felt bad asking Darrell to stand over my shoulder and put sprinkles on them one at a time as I was taking them out of the coating. I think doing some sort of drizzle on the top would work best to "fancy" them up a little, but with all the headaches I ran into along the way it was well after my bedtime by the time I got them finished so I decided they could go without. And let's be honest, I really didn't need to slop one more thing on top of them after the mess that they already were, because I probably would have screwed that up too.

Overall, it was probably the best way to get rid of all the leftover cake we had, and it's definitely something I'll keep in mind in the future--although maybe next time I'll just be more careful when I'm cutting my shape out so I don't have so many "wasted" pieces!