Cake Balls/Pops - Tips & Tricks

The tutorial by Pioneer Woman doesn't leave any gaps and is an excellent guide for making cake balls/cake pops. 

However, here are some things that I learned along the way which helped me: 

- If you use a recipe for a very moist cake, you don't need the equivalent of a can of frosting like Bakerella suggests. She uses a cake mix + 1 can of frosting. I didn't use either a mix or ready made frosting so all I needed was a couple of tablespoons of frosting per 9"x13" cake. 

Start by adding 2 tbsp of frosting at a time. Stop when it feels right: the cake should just come together in a moist (but not wet) dough-like ball. There shouldn't be any loose crumbs and it shouldn't fall apart. It should hold well together. 

- Use a melon-baller to get bite-sized cake pops. (I thought of this after I was done hand-rolling all of my not-quite-identically-sized 400 cake balls :P )

- It helps to refrigerate the cake balls overnight.Or at least a couple of hours.

- If you can't get candy melts or, quite simply, don't like the taste - use either ganache or melted chocolate for dipping. Both will work fine. Candy melts might give a smoother look, though.

- I am not as patient as Bakerella and so, even though she recommends dipping one cake ball at a time into a small bowl of melted, warm candy melts, I had to make 400 and needed to work faster. So I dipped 4-5 at a time in a large metal bowl. 

- I kept boiling up some water in a saucepan, taking it off the heat and placing my metal bowl on top of it while I worked. The steam from the hot water ensured that the chocolate wouldn't cool or thicken quickly while I worked. Therefore decreasing the number of times I had to heat it up between uses.

- Bakerella's technique of tapping the spoon against the side of the bowl is excellent - you get rid of any extra chocolate; ensuring a smoother cake ball. I started out doing it her way but then what I found easier was to use a tablespoon to take the cake ball out after dipping using my left hand, swirling it back and forth in the tablespoon (drips all the extra chocolate off) and then dropping it into a teaspoon (held in my right hand). I would then tap the teaspoon on the back of the tablespoon several times and plop the ball onto waxed paper. 

Does that sound confusing? I wish I could have taken photos to do a tutorial but seeing that both my hands were occupied, it wasn't really possible. 

I hope that helped. 

Now go ahead, give it a try and indulge yourself! 

Drowning in Cake Balls

Once in a while I get orders for cupcakes (for small parties). Last week, someone called me up and said she wanted 200 cake balls for her party.

Then she called back late on Monday night and said she wanted 400. 

400? By Thursday evening? No sweat. 

The last time I made these cake balls for her, it was a year ago for a Valentines Day party so I went all Bakerella in a rare burst of creativity and presented them in a heart-shaped, fondant-covered cake 'gift box' exactly like Bakerella. Ok, it wasn't as perfect as Bakerella's, but that is beside the point: who can compete with The Bakerella? 

Anyway, the woman who placed the order said she wanted the same thing this year. 

Are you kidding me? How many heart-shaped cakes and mind-boggling amounts of red Fondant would I have to make to accommodate those 400 cake balls! I had to say no to the presentation part. Because the other alternative meant I would turn into Monster-Mom and bite off everyone's heads for the rest of the week while I worked day and night preparing for this order and give everyone around me a hard time while I worked on this order.

Kenyan Chocolate Tea

I was 16 when I first discovered a box of this loose tea in a store and bought it on a whim, imagining that when I'd make it, it would taste very chocolaty; like a cross between hot chocolate and tea.  

Wrong.

It's just plain black tea with a very mild but definite hint of chocolate. I had no idea back then, how to brew this tea. And I still don't - I just wing it. But it didn't stop me from brewing a pot now and then, buying it each time I saw it on a shelf in a store and even begging a Kenyan colleague, years later, to send me a tin through anyone coming back from Kenya! 

 

It isn't that addictive. Seriously. I don't even know why I like it so much. And I've never known anyone (other than my Kenyan friend) who has even heard of it, let alone anyone who buys it. [btw, it never occurred to me to ask this person how to make this tea :P ]

Pain au Chocolat

I love pain au chocolat. 

It reminds me of solitary walks on cold winter days.

I love just walking around on my own. I do it less for fitness and more because it makes me feel good. In my early 20's when I lived away from home for a year, I used to walk out of necessity. I had to get to places and so I did a lot of walking which invariably led to a lot of thinking and self-analysis. Walking always clears my head and helps me stay calm and focused. 

In the course of all that walking, I used to stop over at a small bakery not far from where I lived. If I got there early enough in the morning, I could get myself some still-warm-and-fresh-from-the-oven heavenly smelling pain au chocolat. Flaky and crispy on the outside, soft in the middle with a center of warm, gooey chocolate. Such a rich treat, but so light and airy, you are deceived into believing otherwise.

It was the best I have ever had. Maybe because it was freshly baked. Maybe it was the kind of chocolate filling they used. Maybe because I was 21 and every experience, culinary or otherwise, seems awesome or exaggerated in hindsight. 

 

Recently watching Meryl Streep making chocolate croissants in 'It's complicated' has had me thinking about that pain au chocolat all week. Then  this blog post I came across here finally compelled me to give it a try and make my own.

Kidney Bean Pulao, Chicken with Nigella Seeds and Eggplant Raita

Aside from the the very few times we had people over for dinner, everything I have cooked in the past 4 months has been hurriedly put together, often boring and completely uninspired. I have not heard a single complaint. Not one. Did I ever mention that DH is a *very* patient man?

Everyone expected I'd get my groove back eventually. Because they know I'm happiest when pottering around my kitchen. My only condition is that I be left alone.

I haven't put a lot of thought into planning this meal or worried about whether or not all the different flavors will compliment each other. 

It doesn't matter. It's special because it's the first time in a long time that I'm thinking about food with some renewed passion. Which is a good thing.

Thinking about food & making it for people I love makes me happy.

I-scream

My toddler woke up this morning and the first thing she said was: "I want ice-cweam".

I told her I didn't have any and my suggestion "Let's have cereal first and then we'll go down to the store and buy ice cream, ok?" was met with a full-blown  interminably long mother-of-meltdowns (yeah, welcome to terrible 2's).

However, she managed to calm down long enough to make it through breakfast. I really didn't want to go to the store till later in the evening but I try not to say things to my kids that I don't mean or make promises I won't follow through on. I had figured, I would just get the kids in the kitchen after breakfast and we'd make our own ice cream. 

Think again: no cream, not enough milk, no oreos (for their favorite cookies & cream ice cream). There was still no way I was going to go to the store. We just had to make do with whatever we had on hand. Which was basically nothing. And then it hit me: I could make banana ice cream. 

All I need for that is bananas. And this is also something I have known forever but never bothered to try: after all, why make banana ice cream when there are far more exciting (and possibly more palatable) things to make. Such as Nutella ice cream, for e.g. I'm still sulking over my inability to make Nutella ice cream the day before  by the way :( 

Beggars can't be choosers. Banana ice cream it would have to be. 

Nutella: what's not to love?

The entire city is conspiring against me. Their mission is to keep me from getting my weekly Nutella fix. 

I'm all out. And I can't find it anywhere. Not in the small grocery stores, not the hyper-marts. Nowhere.

What makes it worse is that Nutella-related posts have been popping up all over the blogosphere because it is World Nutella Day on February 5. Just this past hour, I have read about at least 5 luscious Nutella desserts and then drooled over the photos in the Nutella day Flickr pool - all of which have sent my cravings completely over the edge. 

I was getting desperate enough to make my own 'Nutella spread' a la David Lebowitz. But that would have required looking for Hazelnut oil, which is just completely impossible slightly harder to find in these parts.


Sigh. 

I so badly wanted to make Nutella ice cream and be part of the 'chocolaty hazelnut wave across the blogosphere' today. 

But no Nutella, no ice cream. 
And no Nutella, no photos :( [Sorry, Sara & Michelle]



And this is hardly an original recipe contribution to World Nutella Day but this is how my kids and I love our Nutella (when we're not eating it straight from the jar): 


Grilled Nutella Sandwich

2 slices whole wheat bread
2 tablespoons Nutella
butter
cooking spray 

Heat griddle/pan. 

Lightly spread the outsides of two slices of bread with butter. 
Spread Nutella on the inside and sandwich together. 

Grill 2 mins per side. 

Slice in half and serve warm. 

Happy World Nutella Day!

Making Marshmallow Fondant

I took a few basic Wilton cake decorating classes last year and in one of our classes we had to learn how to drape our cakes with fondant and make fondant bows etc. 

"Fondant" is such an intimidating word. I used to think one would have to be an expert confectioner or baker to be able to make it. I hadn't the foggiest idea how to make it in the first place and so, like all the other women in my class, I bought a bag of fondant from our instructor (it's not available anywhere else locally where I live). 


It was one of the most vile things I have ever tasted. I couldn't imagine having to bite through it to get to the rest of my cake. Yuck. 


One of the women and I got talking about marshmallow fondant - she had read about it some place and soon we were looking up recipes online and making trial versions. 

Happy Anniversary

Ever since I came across the recipe for Cheesecake with salted butter caramel sauce on Tartelette's blog, I have been dreaming delicious dreams of this cake. And with an anniversary coming up, it seemed I had found the perfect moment to indulge my craving for what sounded and looked like a truly decadent dessert. 

But since I went and completely lost my sense of smell and taste (and no way was I going to make that cheesecake and not enjoy it), I had to settle for making something else. 

I didn't want to make anything too labor intensive since I'm not really up to it like I mentioned in my earlier post today. So, it had to be something simple ... and chocolaty - there's no such thing as too much chocolate, right? Maybe with a hint of orange in the frosting or otherwise... 

Homemade Butter

I've been too unwell since Friday night to actually either make it out of bed or get off the couch. Reason: extremely bad case of Rhinosinusitis & a throat infection. My sense of smell is completely gone, along with my sense of taste - can't even hear with my left ear. It's a wonder I'm functioning at all. 


It's rather disconcerting not to be able to smell or taste anything. I've even tried to jump-start my taste buds by dolloping heaped teaspoons of that Habanero sauce on top of everything I'm eating. But food still tastes like sawdust.


Since I'm unable to stay on my feet for too long & my children need entertainment, I've had to create activities I could either engage in or observe from my permanent position on the couch. 


Today we decided to make homemade butter. It's ridiculously easy. 


I read about how to make it a long time ago & couldn't believe it would actually work so I was just about as surprised as my 5 yr old when we sat around shaking a large Tupperware container half-filled with whipping cream and came up with actual butter in less than 10 minutes!