Little Bits of Chocolate Heaven

Well, it took a bit, but I mastered the cake bite thing. The results are perfectly shaped melt-in-your-mouth bits of chocolate heaven.

The steps:
1. Bake a cake, any cake. I baked Devil's Food.
2. Crumble the cake into fine crumbs.
3. Mix in some kind of gooey sweet stuff. I mixed half of the cake with chocolate fudge topping (about half the jar).
The other half was mixed with coconut/pecan frosting for German Chocolate cake. The result is a gooey play doh.
4. Roll the mixture into balls.
5. Place on wax paper and place in the fridge or freezer until balls are firm.
6. Melt coating and coat balls with coating and let them set up.
7. To create my perfectly formed bites, I used a candy mold.
8. I coated the inside of the mold with 3 thin layers of chocolate.
9. Once the balls were thawed enough to be moldable, I mashed them into the mold to shape them tightly.
10. I pulled the balls out of the mold, added a bit of melted chocolate and put the balls back in the mold.
11. Then I poured more chocolate around the balls and over the top.
12. Once the chocolate was cooled (about 5 minutes), I popped the bites out of the mold and drizzled melted white chocolate over them.



These are the chocolate fudge bites. They are rich and deep in flavor.
















These are the coconut/pecan bites. They are absolutely incredible!


The journey to get here was long, but worth it!

Sometimes I Just Get Lucky!

This is my favorite sofa, that I got from Evans Gatehouse. It's wonderfully soft and best of all is that it's slip-covered and I can and have washed the entire thing in the washing machine!


I love this sofa so much that I ordered another Lee Coverall Sofa, but in a different design and fabric.
In the middle of the cake bite/pop obsession, the new sofa and chair were delivered. I ordered them about six weeks ago and when they were ordered, I was told not to expect them for 8 or more weeks, which was fine since they were going to take the place of a sofa set that is going to a vacation home that is not built yet.






This is the fabric I selected, a brown tweed. There was a contemporary set at the Gatehouse in the same fabric that I liked very much. I just hoped it would work on the design I selected.




The factory got my new set done in record time! So, on Wednesday afternoon, my new set was delivered. And I got to see the design and fabric together for the first time, which is a scary thing, but exciting too.













I really really like them! They are a better scale for the room. I still need to add pillows to dress them up, but I got lucky. Good thing too, because I could never afford to replace them. Now I won't have to; I can just order new slip covers if I get tired of the brown ones.

Cake Pops: Chapter 2

After the first less than successful attempt at cake bites, I started researching the matter. I scoured Bakerella and determined that the next attempt would be the cute chick cake pops with my grand-daughters.






Back to Funfinity for more chocolate, this time in yellow, and sticks.

Some words of advice for others thinking this would be a great project for kids.

1. Make sure the cake balls are made in advance and ready to be dipped before bringing in the kids.
2. Be prepared for a mess (I know, goes without saying) and allow creativity to trump whatever cute little design you had in mind.
3. If you have an aversion to double-dipping, DON'T DO THIS PROJECT. You can't watch everyone at the same time. Enough said.

On to the project.


I baked the Confetti cake flavor, and mixed it with Cream Cheese frosting, about 2/3 of the can. We made balls about 1" wide. Other than making sure not too many balls were handled for too long (get soft and gooey), this project went pretty well.








The girls had a great time dipping the little balls and not too many fell off the sticks. Once the girls figured out how to decorate with toothpicks, the fun really began.







The girls range in age from 3 to 10 and all of them stayed involved in the project until all the balls were dipped (about 2 hours). Their motivation ranged from "Can I eat one now?" (Kenzie) to "I want to put all the colors on mine." (Ember, whose motto is, If a little is good, More is better".
















We made chicks, cupcakes and balls, some on sticks and some not. Since this is a blog about less than perfection, it seems appropriate that the pictures are less than perfect too, so here are our creations in all their imperfect glory!

Cake Pops: First Attempt

A couple of weeks ago I visited The Sweet Tooth Fairy bakery, a charming place with wonderful cupcakes and cookies and Cake Bites. One bite lead to an obsession with these small wonders that has now taken me all over the web to the most delicious sites like Bakerella and Foodgawker.com.

It was only a matter of time before I attempted to make these myself, especially after viewing the adorable creations of Bakerella. But not any cake bites will do for me, oh no. My cake bites had to be as perfect as those from the bakery, which were all perfectly formed.
As from a mold.


Which I had to find, and after a few trips here and there, finally did at Funfinity, a local toy store with a few cake decorating supplies (don't ask). While there, I also bought some chocolate for the coating.








My first attempt was a couple of days ago. Last week we celebrated my mother's birthday and I got the left over strawberry layer cake with cream cheese frosting. Since I knew the basic recipe for cake bites/pops was to crumble the cake and add frosting, wouldn't mixing an already frosted cake together be the same thing?

Maybe not.

Thinking that mixing one way was as good as another, I put the cake into the bowl of the Kitchen Aid and started mixing. Within a few seconds (well, maybe minutes), the bowl was filled with what looked like sticky pink cake batter. Did mixing a cake take it back to pre-baked properties?

Undaunted, I scooped up the sticky-sweet mess and made balls that I put in the freezer. The next morning I melted some white chocolate and poured a bit in my candy mold, thinking that if I dumped the cake bite into the chocolate, it would be perfectly coated with white chocolate and be much easier than brushing the mold with chocolate.

Not quite what I had imagined, unless I had imagined bubblegum colored blobs that resemble some removed body part.

Oh, well, maybe they'll look better coated with chocolate.

I wish I had saved those first creations. I threw them away last night before I had the falling asleep epiphany that led to this blog. I will try to describe them: white truffles with large gaping crevices here and there through which pink stuff oozed.


Maybe I'll have better luck next time.

Not Quite Domestic

Sometimes you get inspiration from the silliest things. Last night I discovered Cakewrecks, one of the funniest blogs I've ever seen. After looking and laughing for over an hour - (I mean, really, it's like a train wreck, you just have to look) I fell into bed, still laughing.

During those final moments before falling asleep, I started thinking about all my disasters, cooking and otherwise, and wondered how many other people have those disasters, and wouldn't it be fun to share them? One drowsy thought led to another, and I spent the night dreaming about a blog devoted to the silly, stupid and funny things we create when the vision in our heads just doesn't match reality.

So, here's to all of us who for whatever reason, just weren't quite domestic gods or goddesses in every thing we attempted. I'm willing to share my own disasters, but frankly, this blog will be pretty short and boring unless others are willing to share too. So, start sending me your own photos and stories and let the laughter and head scratching begin.