Cupcake Bites

These Cupcake Bites are inspired by the awesome Bakerella!

Her book is another book that I have so many "want to do" projects bookmarked in, and this is one of them. They are easier than cake pops since there is no fussing with a stick! It is also a great way to reuse some of that various colored melted candy that you have stored in bowls, well you may not, but I do! It is all Candiquik which can be reheated and used multiple times. This is a great time to use leftover cake and frosting too!

 

Here is what you will need:

melting candy (Wilton, Candiquik, etc- about 8 oz for the cup and 4 oz for the dipped part)

a peanut butter cup mold (mine is Wilton)

sprinkles

cake

frosting

 

When making cake pops or cupcake bites, I want to get to the fun part, not spend tons of time making the cake part! I also decided to go with a light colored cake so it won't show through my light colored candy. This recipe took 10 minutes at most to prepare. It is slightly altered from the Martha Stewart Yellow Cupcake Recipe. This made 31 balls.

   

Ingredients

1-1/2 cup AP flour

1-1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (the original recipe called for butter)

3/4 cup sugar

2 large eggs

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350. Spray 8" round cake pan with cooking spray. Put all ingredients (no special order) in stand mixer and mix on medium for about a minute, scraping sides if needed. Bake for about 35 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely or overnight if you wish. The cake can also be put into the freezer to speed up the process of cooling.

  Once the cake is completely cool and you are ready to begin, crumble the cake up in a large bowl. (I believe the applesauce I substituted for butter made the cake a little denser, but it worked.) I cut the edges off first to keep the edges from discoloring the cake part. Then put 1 to 2 tablespoons frosting of into the crumbled mixture and mix it up.  (I had leftover light red frosting that I used which added color to the crumbs, it turned out to look pretty neat!) Shape into balls that would fit the size of the peanut butter cup mold that you have. If the balls aren't wanting to hold together, add a little more frosting, just enough to get the balls to hold together and chill in the freezer for about 10 minutes.

This is where things get different from cake pops!

    

Melt your chocolate according to package instructions. Working one at a time, fill the peanut butter cup mold a little over half full with your first color (I am using chocolate) and before it sets quickly press in one of the cake balls into the chocolate. Repeat until you have filled your mold. Once your mold is filled, put it into the refrigerator to set for about 15 minutes before unmolding, if the cups don't unmold easily, they aren't quite ready.

Once the cup part of the cupcake bite is chilled and unmolded, dip it into your next color allowing the 2 colors to just meet. Shake off excess and immediately sprinkle or decorate while still wet.
Since I only have one peanut butter cup mold, I had some in the refrigerator chilling while I was dipping the tops of the ready ones.
Total assembly time for 31 cupcake bites from crumbling cake to finished product: 2 hours

At this point you can leave them at room temperature for the candy to set up and just admire them!

Or...just Take a Bite!
    

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These Cupcake Bites are shared with:

All Around My Family Table: Turning the Table Thursday
Dollars and Cents: Sweet Temptations
Something Swanky: Sweet Treats Thursday
Miz Helen's Country Cottage: Full Plate Thursday
Coupon Cookin': Tasty Traditions
Bizzy Bakes: Bake with Bizzy
Happy Hour Projects: Freestyle Friday
Bacon Time: Party Mindie Style
Alli-n-Son: Sweet Tooth Friday
Tidy Mom: I'm Lovin' It
Mangoes and Chutney: Fat Camp Friday
Sweet as Sugar Cookies: Sweets for a Saturday
Home Savvy: Savvy HomeMade Monday
The Kurtz Corner: Tuesday Tutorials
Sweetology: Tea Party Tuesday
Chef in Training: Tuesday Talent Show
Rook No. 17: A Little Birdie Told Me
Crazy for Crust: Crazy Sweet Tuesdays

Pinch of This, That & the Other: Whisking Wednesdays

Goodbye City, Hello Suburbs: Workshop Wednesday

RoCa and Company: You Rock

 

These Cupcake Bites were featured at:
Happy Hour Projects: Monday Highlights
Bacon Time: Fantasic Features
Alli-N-Son: Sweet Tooth Favorites
The Kurtz Coner: Linky Party Features

Owl Cake Pops

Today I am making Owl Cake Pops inspired by Bakerella! These are on the cover of her book and super cute! I have been wanting to make these for some time and today is the day. I have been without cupcakes or dessert for 2 days and that is max for me! I can't wait any longer!

Anyway, my daughter has a Field Hockey game this afternoon and I don't have a whole lot of time, so I don't want to use a full cake, and I really don't want to have to figure out what to do with the rest of the cake that I don't use, so I got a "Snack Size" box of Duncan Hines Devils Food Cupcake Mix. It just makes 12 cupcakes, so I am figuring about 24 cake pops. Since I am trying to do these with minimal time, I just used the hand mixer, so I could throw that bowl in the dishwasher. As usual, I used applesauce instead of oil. I am baking the cake in an 8" round pan sprayed with Wilton Bake Easy Non-Stick Spray. This can has lasted a very long time, I should probably add that to the shopping list so I don't run out right in time for my Wilton Course 1: Decorating Basics class starting on April 4th! I am so excited, can hardly wait! Anyway the cake is in the oven right now...so I am just sitting here waiting!

The ingredients needed for this project are:

A cooked and cooled cake

a tablespoon frosting

chocolate chips (for the ears)

Wings(I am using the brown Reese's Pieces)

Eyes (I am using the candy from the Wilton Easter Candy Necklace Kit)

Candy Melts (I am using Wilton Dark Chocolate Mint Candy Melts)

Beak (I am using Wilton Brownie-Crunch Rainbow Chips)
Flower shaped Sprinkles for feet

I had originally wanted to do these in blue and pink too, but with the time restraint, I am just sticking to brown. I am going to save the other color necklace candies for another time and maybe the Easter Bunny will make a few for my youngest daughters basket! The kit makes 8 necklaces. When taking the picture, I realized there are no white beads, so I guess I will use the yellow and save the blue and pink for later owls.

I just went to check on the cake, not done yet, glad I am not making an actual cake out of it, it has a huge crack across the top and isn't even done yet. That is the nice thing about cake pops, it doens't matter what the actual cake looked like!.........Okay...it's done! Time to cool...

Now it should be about time to make the balls for the cake pops!

I dumped the cake in a large bowl and chopped it up! Easy so far!

Then I plopped some chocolate frosting in, a heaping tablespoon....this is where I made a mistake. It is the same amount of frosting I usually use, but not thinking it wasn't the same about of cake! Everyone knows you can't make cake pops if the cake is too wet, it won't form a good ball or stay on the stick...so we have to fix that problem. I grabbed the cocoa powder and dumped a couple tablespoons in, okay I didn't measure but that was probably about  it, enough to dry out the cake some and get it to a consistency I could work with!

Bakerella's Cake Pop book says to make them triangular. Well look that is about the shape I can make with my hand, so I used that as my guide. For a half box I should be able to make 24 and I made 22...so that's pretty close!

Even my 3 year old got into the rolling of the cake balls. She loves to help and is really getting good at really helping! All of the Cake triangular kind of shape fit on one wax paper covered cookie sheet and off to the refrigerator for about 15 minutes while I get a few other things done! Yes, I do have other things to do than make cake pops all day! While these are chilling I put the entire 14 ounce bag of candy melts into my Wilton Chocolate Pro.

So now it's time to insert the stick. I just dip the stick into the melted chocolate and then into the cake and back into the refrigerator for a few.

Above- the first pic is when I attached the chocolate chip ears, just dipped them into the melting chocolate and stuck them on the cake pop. In the freezer I have 4 earless owls and 4 with ears. These just stay in there while I quickly work, not long enough to freeze or they will crack. The last picture is one that is freshly dipped.

After I dip, I tap on the size of the pot and slowly spin around the pop to knock off extra chocolate. After some time, all 22 are dipped...only one cracked, which I redipped and it is fine now, you would never know which one it was. At this point they are all looking more like Bear faces to me than owls.

Time to decorate, this is the easy part. First I get all my supplies for each owl ready so I am not digging around trying to find the right color. I also learned there are not many brown Reese's Pieces in a bag, so there will be all colored wings AND the little Wilton Candy Necklace set, is already divided up into 8 little bags and there is enough in one bag to do all 22 owls, no point in opening another bag, so they will have different color eyes too. I layed out 4 or 5 owls at a time with the supplies needed to decorate each. This part went really fast, only about a minute each to decorate!

I used the opposite end of a paint brush to dip into the melted chocolate and then to use as glue to attach each piece. As each set dried, pretty well instantly I placed them in my holder.

 I am still using the upsidedown chip box with holes poked in it. I put a papertowel down on it first and there is a towel underneath to keep them from sliding around. Usually I crop the picture so that you can't see the box, but I wanted to show you that you really don't need to get anything fancy or invest in tons of styrofoam. Use what you have. One day I will get a holder...I just haven't seen anything I really like.

This is how I usually photograph them.

Or I put them in a cup to photograph them.

My 3 year old got the first Owl Cake Pop and quickly took a bite...and then handed it over to let me take a picture of just the pop... She is used to the drill! When I asked my husband what animal he thought is was...he chose right, the first time "owl"! So, I guess I didn't do so bad!

Anyways.....I don't know if you get as excited about cupcake stuff as I do, but here are some new finds I found while out shopping this week that I got for future projects!

The Betty Crocker mix is Spring Chip, more pastel, similar to Pillsbury's Funfetti but not as bright. You can't see the specks from this picture. Anyway, they had the frosting too, but the chips were already mixed in the frosting and I didn't really like that for what I am thinking of using it for, so I got the Pillsbury Funfetti Spring Frosting that has there cute little sprinkles seperate.
The Nordicware Cupcake Papers, nice for anytime cupcakes, Orange with polka-dots, Green with stripes, and dark Pink/Reddish with flowers, its a pack of 75 so each color can have it's own batch of cupcakes in the future!
The I couldn't resist the Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish....YUM! They are already gone!