Baking Adventures! Cake Bites!

I don't know about you, but this past month has been crazy with birthday parties, end of the school year parties, end of the soccer season parties, school performances and promotion ceremonies.  I swear we have had not had a quiet day in over a month.  With all of these parties and potlucks, I took it as an opportunity to try my hand at making a version of cake balls and treats on a stick which seem to be all the rage in blogland these days.

First let me say this, Bakerella is pure genius and I love the inspiration from this incredible site.  I love all of her pops and bites and the many variations that others have done out there.  The decorating of these is so fun and so much can be done.  For our end of the season soccer party I decided I wanted to try my hand at these.  A couple of years ago I tried to make some cake ball pumpkins and failed miserably with the cake simply falling off the sticks while I tried to dip them, I decided to try the bites.

I headed to Michaels with my 40% off coupons in hand and picked up some candy melts and a couple of molds for making your own peanut butter cups. 

Following the directions from Bakerella, I baked my cake, let it cool, mixed it with the frosting (and yes, this is very messy but very fun at the same time).  I formed my balls and stuck them in the freezer for a couple of hours but I will say, they really didn't freeze as hard as I thought they would.

I then melted my chocolate candy melts according to the package directions by placing them in a freezer Ziploc bag.  Once the chocolate was to the desired consistency, I simply snipped a small corner of the bag and carefully filled my molds a little less than half full and placed the balls in by twisting them gently to make sure that the chocolate reached the top of the mold.  It took a bit to get my rhythm down but this part went easier than I thought.  These set up pretty quickly, however I was glad I had picked up 2 of the molds as it would have taken forever to finish the over 60 balls I had made.

The next part was really easy, I simply melted the red candy melts in a small, deep bowl and dipped the balls in so that the red met with the chocolate.  I dusted them with a pinch of sprinkles and then my 4 yr old son placed a mini-M&M on top.  I know he ate as many as he placed but that was okay as he so wanted to help.

One of my daughter's friends has Celiacs Disease (and while I looked at making gluten-free cake, I  just couldn't bring myself to paying $5 for a box cake mix so I decided to try using marshmallows instead.  Using the same "bite" concept, I replaced the cake ball with a marshmallow.  I had to pinch the bottom of the marshmallow to make sure that it fin in the mold.  I think they turned out great and she was so excited to get her very own special treat!

My daughter has a summer birthday but her school designates a day at the end of the school year for each child who has a summer birthday where they get to go on stage during their flag ceremony to be recognized.  They also get the opportunity to bring treats for their class.  My daughter's day was the same day as their Kindergarten promotion ceremony and breakfast potluck so I was concerned about sending cupcakes.  The kids were loaded with donuts, muffins and bagels in the morning.  To keep it simple, fun and something that everyone in class could enjoy (her friend with celiac's is also in her calls and her teacher has a gluten allergy as well) we made marshmallow pops.

I let the kids help make these.  I put the marshmallows on a stick and gave each kid a small bowl of sprinkles.  They dipped the marshmallows so they were covered about halfway up and then dipped them in their bowl of sprinkles.  I used my silicone mini-muffin pan and when they finished covering them, they simply placed them back in the whole to set.  This worked great so that they did not stick together.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product.  They were cute and were a big hit at school.  The kids loved them and her teacher loved the simplicity of it as well as cupcakes in the classroom can be VERY messy.