Bakerella wannabe

I recently found the website, Bakerella. While I do like to bake, I have never felt inspired or confident about baking things that are decorated. I truly admire people who can decorate beautiful cakes.........that is really a talent. I have many hobbies and have never really wanted to take up cake decorating. However, when I looked at all the great ideas on Bakerella, I actually wanted to try making her cupcake bites. They looked doable and are very similar to a cake ball recipe I recently bookmarked over at Kelly's Korner. Since I had to take a dessert to my MOPS maidrite fundraiser on Wednesday, I decided to try out the cupcake bites to see if I could pull it off. While my cupcake bites didn't turn out as cute or perfect as Bakerella's, I was still pleased with how they turned out. They tasted really good too. I decided to do a post since a few of my MOPS buddies were wondering how to make them.

I started with a boxed red velvet cake mix and baked it according to the package directions. Once it cooled, I used 2 forks to crumble it up in a large bowl. It is easiest if you crumb up about 1/4 of the cake at a time. Try to get the pieces down to true crumbs, not chunks.

Then I added about 3/4 can of cream cheese frosting and worked it into the cake crumbs with 2 forks.

It takes a little time, but after everything is mixed the mixture is moist and looks kind of like raw hamburger!!

I chilled the mixture overnight which made the next step easier. The following evening I used my Pampered Chef cookie scoop to scoop out balls of the mixture. Then I used my hands to roll the scoops into balls. I placed the balls on waxed paper on a cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet into the freezer.

I chilled my cake balls for probably about 20 minutes which I think was enough time since they held up pretty well in the next step. They could probably have used another 10 minutes or so.

Here's what my hands looked like after rolling all the balls!

I had purchased a peanut butter cup candy mold at Hobby Lobby to do the next step. I made the "easy" Bakerella version of cupcake bites. She has another version she makes using a cookie cutter to form the bottom of the cupcakes. I may try that version too, but this way is really easy. The next two photos show the mold I used.

I wanted white "bottoms" on my cupcakes so I melted white almond bark in the microwave and put a plop of it in the bottom of each cup of the mold as you can see below. Then I squished a cake ball on top of each blob. I think my cake balls were a teeny bit large for these cups, but the almond bark still squeezed up the sides which is what you want.

Then I put the whole mold into the freezer for about 5 minutes or even less to set. I don't know what that weird triangular spot is on my freezer, but there are the frozen waffles I have for breakfast every day!!

For the next part I melted some pink candy wafers in a glass measuring cup in the microwave. I bought these at Hobby Lobby too. I really wanted red tops, but I couldn't find red candy wafers.

I guess I didn't take any photos of the next steps. After chilling the balls in the freezer I popped them out of the molds and held them upside down and swirled them in the melted pink candy. It was a little hard to get it so there wasn't a teeny line of red velvet cake showing between the layers, but I did better after I practiced. Before the candy set I sprinkled each cupcake with rainbow sprinkles. After only a few minutes the candy had set and my cupcake bites were done.

I'm not the best food photographer by any means, but here is what they looked like when finished.

A fun thing about these little treats is that they are completely edible. The cake part on the inside was incredibly moist. I loved these with the red velvet and cream cheese frosting. However, I've been dreaming about making them with chocolate cake, chocolate frosting (homemade, not canned), chocolate candy melts and chocolate sprinkles. Doesn't that sound awesome? These would be so cute to give as a gift all packed up in a little white box with a cute ribbon. I spent quite a bit of time looking at all the fun ideas on Bakerella's website. I also want to try the cake pops which are basically the same thing I did here, but in just a ball shape and attached to a stick!! I think I'm addicted and I'm going to have to make a variation of these for every major holiday. They are just so cute, fun, and yummy!!