Cupcake Bites and Cake Balls

With Valentine's Day upon us, I had decided last week I would make Tony's office a nice little treat. I had planned on making these goodies on Thursday for him to take in on Friday, but I was snowed in today (and yesterday too for that matter) and was starting to go a little stir crazy and bored, and seriously itching for a run. So I decided to pass the day by making these early, since I will hopefully be running the rest of the week and therefore be busy. These little babies are super cute, but they took me all day, and I do mean all day, I began by making my cake at 11 am, I ended up finishing up and cleaning up the kitchen at 7 pm. Granted I did take a couple breaks here and there, but nothing substantial.

I followed Bakerella's directions, except I made the same yellow cake I made a couple weeks ago and my usual Wilton buttercream as my cake ball base. It made way more than 50 balls, it made about double that! I got my mold at Michael's, the basic peanut butter cup candy mold, it cost about $2. I used plain old Toll House semi-sweet chocolate chips to fill the molds, red candy melts as the top, and Sweethearts conversation hearts, white chocolate chips, and some red and white sprinkles to decorate them.

Take your cake after it has completely cooled and crumble in a large bowl, texture should be fine and fluffy. Add in frosting and mix. I tried to do it with a large wooden spoon, but it just wasn't working, so I just dug in and mixed with my hands. After it was all mixed, I began rolling into quarter sized balls. Place balls on parchment covered cookie sheet. Pop in freezer for a couple minutes.

After they have firmed up a bit, get out the candy mold and melt your chocolate in the microwave according to package directions, mine said 6 oz of chocolate chips for 1 minute at 100% and then in 15 seconds increments if needed. I filled a disposable pastry bag with my melted chocolate and piped it into the mold. Right after you fill the mold, press a cake ball into it until the chocolate comes up around the side of the ball. As so:

 

Then place in freezer for about 5 minutes to allow chocolate to harden. Pop out of mold. Get candy melts melted according to package directions and then dip cake ball portion in the candy melt and decorate while the candy is still wet. Place back in fridge to set. 

Since I ran out of most of the red candy melts, and didn't feel like going through the arduous process of filling the molds and waiting for them to harden, I decided to use the remaining cake balls to make just that, cake balls! Much like the ones I made in September I again followed Bakerella and just dipped these babies into some melted chocolate, again just using my Toll House semi-sweet chocolate chips, rolled them around in the melted goodness and then placed them back in the fridge. I also decided to make some white chocolate covered ones. For them I used Toll House white morsels, nuked them in the microwave for 1 minute at 70% power along with 1 TBSP Crisco. I used some of the remaining white chocolate to drizzle with my spoon on the finished cake balls. 

 

 

YUM!!!