My favorite thing about Easter is the candy and treats. I wanted to make something cool for Easter but it seems there’s only so much cool stuff that can be done to cakes. Then I learned about a Dallas company that sells cake balls. There’s looked fancy but I found a recipe online that basically said: bake and crumble a cake, mix with frosting, form little balls and dip in chocolate. Sounds easy enough, right? I decided to make it more dificult but making them into chocolate cadbury bunny eggs with frosting as the yolk and egg whites.
To start off I baked a regular box chocolate cake, I used a regular 9 x 11 rectangular pan, and let it cool for about 10 minutes. While it was still warm on the outside I crumbled at first half the cake into a large bowl. I did half in case something went horribly wrong but I think I could’ve easily done all of it. The recipe said to do it while it’s still warm, but be careful because for me warm turns to scalding hot in the middle.
I mixed in the frosting in small batches at a time. For a small bowl of cake it took a few scoops of frosting. i used vanilla frosting and the easiest way to mix was with my fingers. I found out that if you use enough frosting to make it sticky, then you don’t see the frosting. If I use a lot of colored frosting then it kind of colors the cake but not very strongly.
It took me quite awhile to figure out how to make the eggs work like they were supposed. I used plastic eggs for my molds, it just turned out that the camo ones opened long ways instead of across the middle like normal eggs. I packed one side of the egg to a little over flowing with the cake, and the otherside packed thickly with a little space to put a little yellow and white frosting. Then i closed the two egg halves together until they closed, then slowly pulled each side apart. If I had enough cake in there, then it stick together.
After a bit of a mess and some research, I learned that you need to freeze the cake balls before dipping them in chocolate. The cake balls are pretty wet when you first make an egg or just roll it into little balls, I can see them being perfect at that point to roll in coconut or powdered sugar. I made 14 successful eggs, and used 8 cubes of chocolate bark to coat them. I heated the bark in the microwave, which requires frequent reheating, and thickly coated the eggs. They ended up bigger then the plastic eggs, don’t melt at room temperature and were absolutely loved by everyone who ate them.
I thought it’d be fun to do a little twist on the traditional Easter egg dying tradition. I picked up a dozen quail eggs at Hong Kong Supermarket for $1.19. I boiled them for 5 minutes, let them cool and dunked them in a homemade Easter Egg dye mixture of 4 parts hot water, 1 part vinegar and 5 drops of food coloring. Here’s my result!
They were more for a centerpiece than anything else, but I thought they looked awesome! They have a really earthy texture to them since quail eggs are naturally speckled. As an added bonus, I got to eat the boiled quail eggs later that night. I love boiled quail eggs with rice and a little soy sauce. Yum!
Just in time for clearance Easter candy! We had a BBQ at Lake Arlington for Easter today and lots of fun was had. Probably the cutest part of the day was these little Peep-kabobs! It’s a super simple recipe and they taste GREAT! Just take a stick of chocolate Pocky and skewer on three marshmallow Peeps. You may need to make the holes with a straw or something similar before you put them on the Pocky; I broke 2 sticks before finally getting them on. Toss them on a warm grill, just enough to melt the chocolate a little- these things are very structurally sound.
Don’t feel like getting the grill going? Toss it in the microwave for a few seconds. You could stick them in the toaster oven for a minute or two. Or run a torch over them to toast the Peeps a little. If you can manage to stick 2 Pocky sticks in there, you might even be able to manage holding them over a campfire!
Heating them up gives them a very smore-like taste! Awesomeness! Just check out Angela trying a kabob out!
I have baked a lot, but usually it’s pretty hard to make something really cute, let alone anything fancy. This year was different, I’ve been learning a lot about baking techniques so I wanted to make a 3D cake. Everything I found was for making big cakes (2-4 cake mix boxes) and I don’t know anyone who really wants/needs to eat that much cake. So I was armed with just the basic understanding of piecing together these kind of cakes and half an idea of how to do it on a much smaller scale with cupcakes.
The baking was easy enough, following the directions on the cake box I made 24 cupcakes and had enough batter leftover to make a small loaf of cake about 1 in x 3 in. Cupcakes was a wonderful idea because they’re small so if I mess up I have a lot to work with, and those suckers were room temperature in like 10 mins. I usually don’t have the patience to let my cakes cool enough before trying to get creative.
My first attempt is the flat bunny to the left, which is really just a cupcake made with cupcake parts put together, not really anything cake about it. The next attempt is the bunny in the middle (not a mouse, a bunny ^_^) That one is 2 cupcakes for the legs, 1 for the body and little pieces for the ears. Everything is held together with frosting and toothpicks, and can stand up on its own. The last thing in the picture is just a cupcake easter basket.
This guy is my pride and joy, it’s a loop eared rabbit, the kind with massive floppy ears. Each ear is half a cupcake, the body is the small bread loaf, and both back legs are about 2/3 of a cupcake each. The tail is a marshmallow, in both pictures the candies are jelly beans and the garnish is green dyed coconut. This one I could see on the shelf of a bakery.
One of the great things about getting into how to make special food is being able to put together this kind of stuff. And my masterful training came from watching Food Network!
Maximum burnination! Another segment of our Peeps Torture series is done. We’ve successfully doused an innocent little peep in lighter fluid and set it ablaze! Bwahahaha!
When brainstorming for our Easter special Peeps Torture series, I thought I’d figure out a way to torture a Peep AND make something tasty at the same time. It’s like killing two marshmallow birds with one stone! Or in this case, four spinning steel blades.
The addition of marshmallow Peeps to a strawberry smoothie give it a thicker and creamier texture. You really can taste the Peeps!
Strawberry Peeps Smoothie:
Ingredients
3 Peeps (I used yellow chicks because I’m old school)
1 Peep for garnishing (optional)
1 cup of frozen strawberries
1 cup of milk
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
Directions
Add, in order, Peeps, frozen strawberries, milk, sugar and vanilla to the blender.
As part of our on-going Easter Peeps Torture series, we are now pan frying a marshmallow peep. If you’re going to do this at home, fair warning: there’s going to be a good bit of smoke!
Just like when I was little, the holidays bring to mind holiday food. While most holidays have associated candy, for some reason I hold Easter candy to a higher quality then the rest. Have you ever had a chocolate bunny made of crappy chocolate? It’s like a crime against taste buds!
Now for this unusual cookie/candy thing. The wrapper picture shows round cookies, or flying saucers, the art is weird. But instead of cookies, out came 4 rectangular chocolate squares with big chunks of chocolate and vanilla pieces. The chocolate bar part is about 1/4 inch thick and sweet, and melts in your mouth. The cookie crumbs have a mixture vanilla, milk chocolate and dark chocolate pieces. While the chunks are tasty and the different colors have different flavors is great, I can’t help be distracted by the ‘density’ of the chunks. Density is a weird term but it’s hard to describe how hard the cookie chunks are. They’re more like hard candy then cookie crumbs, I can feel them in every bite. But then again, if they weren’t so hard they would probably get crumbled during shipping and leave a powder in the wrapper.
Despite the extra crunchiness, I can see this being part of a special Easter basket. There’s good quality chocolate, with different flavored chocolate and vanilla bits and it’s unique appearance would make an excellent gift. And if you kept the chocolate side up, then no one would suspect the crumbs on the bottom.
I give Herberts Cookies and Chips candy bar a 4 out of 5!
Welcome to the first installment of our special Easter segment, Peeps Torture! Oh, sorry. I meant Peeps Advanced Interrogation Techniques. Better? Not really, but here we go!
From now until Easter, I’m going to find new ways to maim, mutilate and macerate these cute little marshmallow chicks! I figured I first should start with the classic torture- the microwave. Surprisingly, I’ve never actually microwaved Peeps. There are pop culture references to it, but I never got around to doing it. That’s about to change!
Here’s the video of microwaving Peeps for 30 seconds:
Wow, that was actually more than I expected. Microwaving Peeps cause them to fluff up and grow to almost 3 times the size. After about 20 seconds, the Peep starts to deflate. The other 10 seconds was more overkill than anything else. And the coolest part? It tastes awesome! Better than “live” Peeps, these nuked Peeps taste alot like those meringue cookies. Same texture and everything!
Our lesson today- microwaving defenseless marshmallow baby chicks is delicious.
I mixed in the frosting in small batches at a time. For a small bowl of cake it took a few scoops of frosting. i used vanilla frosting and the easiest way to mix was with my fingers. I found out that if you use enough frosting to make it sticky, then you don’t see the frosting. If I use a lot of colored frosting then it kind of colors the cake but not very strongly.
After a bit of a mess and some research, I learned that you need to freeze the cake balls before dipping them in chocolate. The cake balls are pretty wet when you first make an egg or just roll it into little balls, I can see them being perfect at that point to roll in coconut or powdered sugar. I made 14 successful eggs, and used 8 cubes of chocolate bark to coat them. I heated the bark in the microwave, which requires frequent reheating, and thickly coated the eggs. They ended up bigger then the plastic eggs, don’t melt at room temperature and were absolutely loved by everyone who ate them.
Just in time for clearance Easter candy! We had a BBQ at Lake Arlington for Easter today and lots of fun was had. Probably the cutest part of the day was these little Peep-kabobs! It’s a super simple recipe and they taste GREAT! Just take a stick of chocolate Pocky and skewer on three marshmallow Peeps. You may need to make the holes with a straw or something similar before you put them on the Pocky; I broke 2 sticks before finally getting them on. Toss them on a warm grill, just enough to melt the chocolate a little- these things are very structurally sound.
The baking was easy enough, following the directions on the cake box I made 24 cupcakes and had enough batter leftover to make a small loaf of cake about 1 in x 3 in. Cupcakes was a wonderful idea because they’re small so if I mess up I have a lot to work with, and those suckers were room temperature in like 10 mins. I usually don’t have the patience to let my cakes cool enough before trying to get creative.
This guy is my pride and joy, it’s a loop eared rabbit, the kind with massive floppy ears. Each ear is half a cupcake, the body is the small bread loaf, and both back legs are about 2/3 of a cupcake each. The tail is a marshmallow, in both pictures the candies are jelly beans and the garnish is green dyed coconut. This one I could see on the shelf of a bakery.
Strawberry Peeps Smoothie:
Just like when I was little, the holidays bring to mind holiday food. While most holidays have associated candy, for some reason I hold Easter candy to a higher quality then the rest. Have you ever had a chocolate bunny made of crappy chocolate? It’s like a crime against taste buds!