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Monday, March 7, 2011

Cake Balls-Part 1: The Failures

How it all started..........
Secret email chain between Me, Curly T, and Beezus5 in regards to Shanzie's Birthday party......
ME: should we make/buy cupakes or a cake or something for saturday night for shanzies bday partay?  what does she like?  will the bar allow that?
T: hey...sorry, for the delay in response...I didn't have to work today.  Yes...I think she would definitely appreciate that....and I would think that the bar would be fine with it since we are bringing like 20 people into their business (but B5 might know the establishment better).
B5:  The Bar would be fine with that. #1 i'm in with the waitresses, #2 i had some cake balls there a few nights ago for another dude's bday.
ME:  ooh maybe we can make cake balls.  i have wanted to try them
T:  my co-worker brought in cake balls for Valentine's day and they were delicious!!!
ME:  yeah i see them on food blogs all the time.  lets do it.  I THINK IT'S PRETTY EASY.  you just bake a box cake and crumble it up and mix it with icing and dip it in something.  we can add some sprinkles to make it birthdayish.  i'll look it up.

Of course I was the one who had to say "i think it's pretty easy."  In my head I should have known it wasn't going to work out as I planned (just like those Martha Stewart glasses).  So after a few more email chains we decided that B5 and I would pre-bake some cakes and take them over to T's house on Saturday morning.  She would get the stuff to decorate them and then we would make something amazingly beautiful, just like these.......
Picture from cakepops.com (much prettier pops than ours)
So anyways, my first big fail happened when I was making the cake.  The directions on the box said to add 1/3 cup of oil.  Apparently I thought it said to add 1 and 1/3 cups of oil.  Ooops.  I didn't realize this until the cake had been baking for like 45 minutes and it was still liquidy.  It finally baked and I decided since we were crumbling it up it would be fine. 

No, not really.   I should have known.  I mean the balls were pretty soggy even after I froze them.  The first one I tried to make ended up like this.....as did the next few. 
We finally got a few of them to stay on the sticks but an hour later we realized that they were actually leaking oil (yeah there was that much oil in them).  GROSS.  So we threw away all the pink cake.  Fortunately I did make a chocolate cake with the correct amount of oil and B5 made a yellow cake to use

Our next big mishap occurred when B5 threw one of the recently coated melted chocolate balls under T's kitchen table.  Ok she didn't really throw it.  She just dropped it.  I just stood there frozen and yelling while T and B5 actually figured out how to get the (hardening) chocolate off the carpet.  (I also took pictures. I'm sooo helpful in a crisis.)  Good times.

by the way, they got the chocolate up with clorex wipes, I think
So in conclusion, when you make cake balls don't add 4 times the amount of oil the cake recipe calls for and try not to drop the balls on the ground.  See what we had to go through, Shanzie.

Did we end up with any successful cake balls?  You will find out tomorrow in the riveting conclusion, 'Cake Balls-Part 2'. 

8 comments:

sara said...

I keep wanting to make these for something, but now I'm starting to rethink that...

$hanzie said...

Tha cake balls were amazing! I loved them. Seriously I was so surprised! Thank you for all of the hard work and I am in love with the picture of Curly T and Beezus 5 underneath the table cleaning chocolate out of the carpet.... hilarious. They look very serious.
Thank you thank you thank you! You are true friends!

Amanda @ It's Blogworthy said...

I LOVE Cake balls but had the same experience you had making them. Mine didnt' eve get to the stage where you put icing on them. Why do they look so easy on other people's?

Hutch said...

I'm very curious to see how yours turned out. I'm guessing they're fantastic! I made them for the cookie exchange two years ago. I split the cake and did half PB and half nutella. Rolling in the melted chocolate was a bitch though. I did them again for Halloween and used red icing/melted white chocolate to make them look like eyeballs.

Shana said...

I've never had these, but they are adorable. Can't wait to see how the finished products came out.

Anonymous said...

The idea sounds terrific, and I am assuming that tomorrow will be your successes - but it sounds very complex for this non-baker...

bmellisen said...

The oil-ball I ate was not all that good...plus my hand was greasy for like 6 hours.

Bonnie said...

You didnt add the amazing quote where you desperately shouted "I FAILED!" on that first cake ball. I cant wait for the conclusion, even though i was there and all.