Chocolate Cake Balls with Tiny Green Flowers - November 2014

I made these cake balls for my brother-in-law Brad as a get well soon treat after he got burned on his hands, face, and torso.  (The cake balls got jostled around on the car trip up there, we were visiting for Thanksgiving, hence the scuffed up look.  I didn't take any pictures of them before we left. 😕)

To make the basic cake balls, I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

After dipping them I topped them with the little green flowers that I had made ahead of time.  They are just made from mint green fondant that I colored, rolled out, and cut flowers out using a tiny flower cutter.  I shaped the flower a little by using the small end of a ball fondant tool to make a depression in the center of the flower.  

You'll want to make sure you have your decorations ready so you can place them on top of the cake ball before the chocolate hardens.  I topped some of the cake balls with one flower in the center, and for others I used three flowers.  

After all the cake balls were dipped and topped with the flowers, I used a small paint brush to put some white food coloring in the centers of the flowers.

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Switchfoot Themed Chocolate Coffee Cake Balls - November 2014

I made these chocolate coffee cake balls for the band members of Switchfoot and their crew as part of the Switchfoot Baking Club.  (I also made some coffee sugar cookies and some deconstructed chocolate chip cookies; you can click here to see those.)

More details to come... 😊

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Music Themed Cake Balls - March 2014

My son's band was having a cake ball sale; so I made these music themed cake balls to donate to it.

More pictures to come... :)

I used white candy melts to pipe the music notes, treble clefs, and bass clefs out onto parchment paper.  I let them harden and they were ready for when I needed them to decorate the cake balls.

To make the basic cake balls I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

Right after dipping the cake balls I topped them with some yellow nonpareil sprinkles and one of the white music themed candy decorations.  You have to be ready and work quickly so the chocolate doesn't harden before you get everything on it.

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Pink Heart Cake Balls - February 2014

I made these cake balls for a good friend whose grandfather had passed away.

To make the basic cake balls I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

I used a #3 round tip to pipe pink candy melts onto parchment paper in heart shapes.  I filled a few of them in, but most were just the outline.  I let them harden and set so they were ready when I started dipping the cake balls.  

Ready to dip!

Right after dipping the cake ball I placed a pink heart on top.  If it starts to slide a little just hold it in place for a second.  Have your decorations ready and be quick so you get them placed before the chocolate hardens; it looks nicer that way.  If you don't get it on in time though you can dot a little chocolate on top the cake ball and attach it that way.

Here are a few extras that I decorated differently.

For the cake balls in the picture above I had to hold the hearts in place until the chocolate hardened enough to hold them upright on their own.

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Music Note Cake Balls - January 2014

My son's band was having a cake ball sale; so I made these music themed cake balls to donate to it.

I used black candy melts to pipe the music notes out on to parchment paper.  I let them harden and they were ready when I needed them to decorate the cake balls.

To make the basic cake balls I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

Right after dipping the cake balls I sprinkled some yellow sanding sugar sprinkles on top, and then placed a music note on top standing straight up.  You have to be ready and work quickly so the chocolate doesn't harden before you get everything on it.  I had to hold the music note in place until the chocolate hardened enough to hold it upright on its own (a couple ended up a little crooked :/).  I had to be careful when handling the music notes as the stems were a bit fragile.  I had a couple snap, but thankfully I was able to repair them or replace them with extras I had made.

I thought the cake balls turned out very nicely, and the bake sale was a success!  Yay!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Thanksgiving Cake Balls - November 2013

These are some cake balls I made for a dessert for Thanksgiving.  I used the 'cake scraps' I had left from leveling the cakes that I used to make my daughter's Peter Pan cake.

To make the cake balls I followed Bakerella's instructions.  You can find them here.

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Switchfoot Themed Cake Balls - October 2013

These are cake balls I made for the band members of Switchfoot and their crew as part of the Switchfoot Baking Club.  I decorated them with various 'Switchfoot themed' items, and brought them to their Fading West movie viewing and concert back in October. 

 

[The little picture of the guitar to the side is a correction on one of the guitars that I had made that I delivered at a later date.  I got it wrong and it bugged me. ;) ]

More pictures and details to come... :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Golf Themed Cake (with a Surprise Inside) - June 2013

I made this golf themed cake for my brother-in-law, Josh, for his birthday.

And, SURPRISE, the cake was PLAID inside!  :)

For this cake I used a new recipe that is so good!  I had heard about it a long time ago, but had never tried it.  It is a white almond sour cream cake.  Here is a link to the recipe that I used, and here is a link to the same person's recipe, just written a little differently.  I highly recommend trying this recipe out.

So, this is how I made the inside of the cake plaid.  After mixing my cake batter I separated it about in half and then took out a small portion from one of the bowls.  (Sorry, I don't have exact measurements that I used.)  In the bowl with the majority of the batter I added blue food coloring to make a light blue shade.  In the bowl with the small portion of batter I added blue food coloring to make a darker shade of blue.  I left the last bowl of batter white.  When pouring the batter into the pans I used my checkerboard cake pan set.  In two of the pans I poured the white batter in the center circle and the outer rings.  Then in the same pans I poured the light blue batter in the middle rings.  In the third pan I poured the light blue batter in the center circle and the outer ring, and then poured the dark blue batter in the middle ring of that pan.  This is how the batter looked in the pans ready to go into the oven.

After baking I flipped the cakes out of their pans after 15 minutes and let them finish cooling completely.  Then I leveled the tops of the cakes.

When stacking the cakes I put one of the white cakes on the bottom, the all blue cake next for the middle layer, and the other white cake went on top.  I used orange buttercream icing in between each cake layer.  (My brother-in-law is a Broncos fan, so I figured I'd incorporate those colors into his golf cake. :) )  Later when you cut into the cake you have plaid inside!  :)

I put a 1-1/2 inch strip of white fondant around the bottom of the cake.  Then I used a grass tip to cover the rest of the cake with green buttercream icing.  I made a diamond template that was 1 inch in diameter and about 1-1/2 inches tall.  I rolled out blue and orange fondant and cut out enough diamonds to go around the cake.  I attached the diamonds to the white strip at the bottom of the cake, and then drew on the dotted black diamonds with a black food coloring marker.  I made mini golf balls and placed them around the top edge of the cake. 

The golf tees are lollipop sticks covered in fondant and shaped to look like a tee.  Originally I was going to make cake balls for the golf balls on top of the tees, but my golf ball candy mold was still packed from moving, and I didn't have time to find it.  So, I just made them out of fondant and painted the letters on with black food coloring.  I may have used my black food coloring marker for the letters, I don't remember now which it was.  :)  I stuck the golf tees into the cake and attached the golf balls to the tops of the tees.

I really liked the look of this cake, and I was excited about the plaid inside!  :)  And everyone loved the new recipe that I used for the cake.  It was delicious.  :)

Afterwards I used the cake scraps that were leftover from leveling the cakes to make some cake balls.

(Created animated name at this site.)

Pigeon Cake Pops and Light Blue Cake Balls - November 2012

So, after I made Carissa's Mo Willems themed birthday cake and her Pigeon Cupcakes to celebrate her birthday at school, I decided to use the leftover cake to make Pigeon Cake Pops and some Cake Balls for us to enjoy at home.  [I'd made cake balls before, but this was the first time I'd made cake pops, definitely a bit tricky.  These were just for fun, and good thing because some of them came out pretty funny looking, a couple aren't even pictured here.  :) ]

To make these Pigeon Cake Pops I started with the recipe found on Bakerella's website for cake pops (using light blue candy melts for my coating).

 

After the step where you dip the cake pop into the candy melts to coat it, I inserted yellow candy coated sunflower seeds into the candy coating to be the beaks.  (For the bottom half of the beak, I cut a little of the end off the sunflower seed, so it would be a little shorter than the top one.)  You have to insert the beaks quickly before the candy coating hardens.  On the cake pops with the smaller candy eyeballs (made by Wilton) I also had to put the eyes on each side before the coating hardened.  So, make sure you have everything set out and ready for each cake pop, so you can grab it and put it on quickly after you dip the cake pop.

 

For the cake pops with the larger flatter eyes I waited until the candy coating was hardened (still put your beaks on before the coating sets), and then I piped on the eyes with some white candy melts.  To get the white candy melts ready to pipe on, I heated them per the instructions on the package and put some in a piping bag with a round tip (I think it was a #3).  After the eyes hardened I used black food coloring to paint the pupils on the eyes.  On the last cake pop pictured with this type of eye, I just used one sunflower seed to make the beak.  I used a black food marker to make the line on that beak.

 

The kids enjoyed seeing the finished product.  They enjoyed eating the finished product even more, and even the funny ones still tasted good!  :)

  

 

I only ended up making about 7 Pigeon cake pops, so below are the cake balls that I made as well.

 

To make these cake balls, I just used the recipe found on Bakerella's website for cake balls.  These were chocolate cake mixed with vanilla icing, and I used light blue candy melts for the coating, topping them with white crystal sugar sprinkles before the candy coating hardened.

Yummy!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)