A Rendezvous with Sneakers

Yes, my cake ball/pop expedition has continued throughout the these past couple of months, along with my attempts at trying new, and more complicated little treats. It started off with the bears and helmets, then roosters and chicks, strawberries, and now Rainbow balls.

I must say it was a bit daunting baking rainbow balls, especially after having baked the cake I looked at directions to say how you are really supposed to make them (oops). But since mine came out perfectly fine doing them the “Molly way” I thought I’d share my way of making them.

1. Bake cake according to mix (ofcourse, like always, you can make cake from scratch. I’m simply too lazy. You can make gluten free if you want as well. I don’t like eating cake, so I just used a white cake mix).

2. Separate the cake into four pieces, or 6, depending on how many colors you want to be in the cake ball. This is done after the cake is cool.

3. Crumble up the pieces in individual bowls, then add food coloring to each bowl (I used red, green, blue and yellow). You can use the drops food coloring, which I used for green and red, or food coloring gel, which I used for yellow and blue. The gel definitely brings out a stronger color. I used my hands to mix in the color with the crumbles.

4. Add about a table spoon of frosting to each color mixture and using your hands, mix in the frosting. I also used my hands for this. *Note, you might need more or less frosting depending on how large your crumble quantity is.

5. Put the bowls in the refrigerator and let chill for about 30 or so minutes to “harden”. Do whatever you like in that time.

6. Shape the colors into long logs and slightly smush them so they spread out. Once you have done one color, do the same thing for the additional colors, pressing them ontop of the different color layer.

7. Take pieces off and make balls with them. I made smaller balls and larger balls (you’ll see why later).

8. Place in the fridge to harder, about 30 minutes. Or less.

9. While in the fridge, make daisy’s using while gum paste. I added clear vanilla flavoring to the gum paste because it has no taste. You can add any flavoring, really. Look around your local crafts store which houses all the baking items, and you can find what you need. To make the flowers, you roll out the gum paste and I used a wilton Daisy fondont cutter to cut out the shapes. Then, I placed the flowers in small dishes so they would create that 3-d look of flowers. With the candy coating (mentioned below) I placed one cut-out over another cut out, using coating to glue, and then added a yellow M&M to the center of the flower. Then, I shaked a small amount of pearl colored edible dust onto the flowers to give them a glittering look.

9. Melt the candy coating according to directions–I used chocolate flavored coating. I used green coating for the decorating.

10. Take the balls out and one by one dip them in the chocolate. I used a spoon to dip them in, then gently tapping against the side of the bowl to get excess coating off. Slide onto a plate. Repeat this for all the balls.

11. When the coating has hardened, I used green coating to drizzle over the smaller cake balls. Using left over brown coating, I placed a small dot on the larger balls and then onto that placed a flower.

completed balls

12. I placed the completed balls in the fridge so they would not melt.

13. If you want to be real creative, you can put the balls in small “cupcake” 1-inch liners, and place them in a box. Since mine are for someone’s birthday, I decorated the outside of the box. Then, I used green packing material–similar to what you put in easter baskets–and put that in a terra cotta planter and placed the large flower balls in the planter. Then, wrapped the planter in clear wrap.

outside of box

What would fit inside the box

14. And, you are done! Not as difficult as I thought it would be, but like any cake balls, they are a bit time consuming so you need to plan out a good couple of hours to do this.

What the inside looks like–I crushed this ball by accident

And now, off for a quick run before ride–I’ll get to next week’s training plan later this weekend.

I love spring