My First Foray into Cupcake Bites

So I came across these cupcake bites on Bakerella's site (which is fab for ideas btw). I thought they could be good for when Mr.'s family visited for the Air and Water Show (more on that in another post).

This was my experience making them.

I made these with yellow cake and chocolate icing. I am not a huge fan of cream cheese frosting so I deviated from Bakerella's recipe.

I probably got about 7 or 8 dozen cake balls. I lost count after awhile. Here they are lined up and ready to go:



The first thing I tried to do was melt some milk chocolate for the bottoms. My first batch was a disaster. The chocolate would not melt in the double boiler. I gave up and threw it in the microwave where it nicely burned.

Since Mr. and I were going to the grocery store anyways, I bought some more.

I tried to use milk chocolate because, while I bought some light cocoa Wilton candy melts, I wasn't sure how they would taste so I figured I would try the milk chocolate first. The second batch did melt, but the consistency was so thick, it was hard to get it into the molds. I got about a dozen for one baker's chocolate bar. As a result, I did end up using the Wilton's candy melts. They taste the same and were MUCH easier to work with so I recommend those.

Here is a tip: if you are making 8 dozen cupcake bites, and those bites take 10 minutes to harden in the freezer within the mold, buy more than one mold. This whole process took FOREVER as I could only do 11 at a time.

Another tip: I had bought one bag of candy melts for the top and just one for the bottom. This was not enough. For one box of cake, I would recommend two for both the top and bottom.

The instructions said just to dip the top into the melted melts. When I did this, the cake balls flew out of the bottom and landed in the melts. See the disaster that ensued here:



I waited until all of the bottoms were done before doing the tops which meant the cake balls no longer were cold. I am wondering if that was part of the reason for the above.

I thought the melts were too thick and tried to heat them up more to thin them out. It didn't work. I ended up applying the melts with a spoon. It was messy but it got on the balls.

Yesterday morning, I read some of the comments on Bakerella's site and it appears the thickness issue was a common problem. She recommended looking at the Martha Stewart cake ball demo. I did this and her process looked much easier than mine and it also confirmed that the balls should have been cold when I dipped them. Lesson learned.

I guess Wilton brand melts might be too thick? Bakerella seems to use Merckens brand because that is what she links to on the site. I want to try these. I also got some advice that you can thin out the Wilton candy melts using paramont crystals or vegetable oil. May try that as well.

Moving on, I ran out of melts as I mentioned earlier so I had some nudies:



Mr. suggested melting some chocolate chips so we have some with a semi-sweet top in lieu of nudieness:



These were not the best but we ate them.

And last but not least we had some that turned out more normal but a far cry from the inspiration pics on Bakerella's site:



Regardless of appearance, they were all good and people ate them.

I want to try them again with a thinner melt and more molds. I think this idea could be applied to be many things so I am anxious to give it another go.