Cake Balls

Once upon a time, a long long ago A few months ago, I was extremely fascinated with cake pops. I'd browse through websites and blogs online, and my eyes would shine excitedly as I devoured endless colourful pictures of cake pops.

Bakerella was known to made them super duper popular since 2008 (correct me if I'm wrong) and have you seen them?? They're just crazy awesome!!

You mean, you don't know what they are?

Here's a screen shot:

Cake pops are basically bite-sized cakes on lollipop sticks!

They are so so so so insanely cute!

And with all the hard work, you can expect them to cost a bomb. :)

So I went around, looking for lollipop sticks to buy. And I couldn't find them anywhere. (I later found out from my colleague that I wasn't looking hard enough!)

I even contemplated using toothpicks or satay skewers. *chuckles*

Truth to be told, my attempt to bake cake balls was purely accidental. It was in no way planned.

After our Batu Dam Trail run that morning, I firmly insisted with YB that we had to spend the afternoon at home because I wanted to bake.

The problem was, I ended up baking a really dry brownie which I didn't know what to do with it. (I used some cake version of a brownie recipe because I couldn't find the one Lynn had shared with me earlier.)

I don't like cake-like brownies. Bleh.

Chucking it out was the first thing that came into my head.

Then I thought perhaps some icing would make it better.

It was peanut butter icing.

But nope, it didn't work. It didn't make it any better nor tastier.

What a waste of good peanut butter! :(

I cracked my head, contemplating the alternatives to chucking it out.

It was only 30 minutes later I decided to turn them into cake balls.

A cake ball or cake pop recipes starts off with a basic cake recipe.

And then you mash it into pieces.

(A waste of cake, if you asked me. Sniff.)

Chuck in the cream cheese, sugar and butter (I can't remember which recipe I referred to but it could be this one here), and mix them nicely until you can shape them into balls.

Please don't say they look like edible poop balls...

Well, they do look like poop, especially when I had used chunky peanut butter for the icing. Haha! See the bits of peanuts?

In our Malaysian humidity, I found it hard to make sure the balls stay in shape. I left the balls in the fridge for a while before baking them. Every now and then I'd pop the tray of balls back into the fridge, and in between batches. I had to!

Generally most people would coat cake balls or pops with melted chocolate but I was't willing to waste more chocolate.

Used some decorative rice instead. :D

Now they just look like decorative poop balls. :D

YB and I found them rather sweet.

Next alternative was crushed nuts.

I pounded some roasted almonds and peanuts. I'd roll the balls into some chocolate before coating the balls with nuts.

It was a messy procedure.

I was rather impatient and made the balls pretty large, hoping I would finish up the 'dough' as soon as possible.

The balls turned out to be huge, which required 4 dainty bites to gobble it all up.

Despite the size, they turned out to be good!
I brought some to work the and a few of colleagues enjoyed them. They loved the nutty taste!


Will I ever make them again?
Not in the near future.

I made only 10 12 or 14 balls and I threw the rest away.


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Cake pops was previously featured in The Star newspaper in June 2011. There was also an offer available on the Groupon Malaysia's website.