Our 4th of July was a comedy of errors and this cake falling apart was the icing on the cake. Some days just don’t go according to plan. So, when life gives you lemons, I say pass up the lemonade and make cake pops!

Cake Balls

Let me back up. I planned to make a double layer lemon cake with strawberry filling, cream cheese icing and fresh strawberries on top.

I made the batter.

Strawberry Lemon Cake Ingredients

The lemon cakes were perfect – spongy and fragrant. I added the strawberry filling.

Lemon Cake with Strawberry Filling

I carefully added the second layer.

Double Layer Lemon Cake with Strawberry Filling

I started to frost my beautiful creation.

Frosting a Double Layer Lemon Cake

And then, like a road buckling in a heat wave, my cake failed.

Cake Wreck

CAKE FAIL!

I laughed. Seriously? To get this far and have a huge wreck of a cake? Tragicomedy.

I know where I went wrong. I didn’t let the cakes cool completely, plus the house was 78 degrees. The warm cake couldn’t handle the design and crumbled. I am so impatient! Next time I will pop the cakes in the freezer to cool down before frosting.

I stared at my cake wreck and wondered if I could salvage any part of it. I remembered my friend Amanda, the amazing i am baker, telling me about cake balls. It sounded crazy to me. Who would bake a cake, frost it, and then mush it altogether? But, my cake wreck stared at me gloating. I decided to turn my lemon cake into lemon cake balls.

I found these directions for cake balls online, mushed the cake wreck into a bowl and chilled the “batter” for a few minutes. I tried to use an ice cream scoop to make the balls, but my scoop was worthless. I ended up rolling the balls by hand. I plopped them on a wax paper covered cookie sheet, stuck a pretzel stick in each and put them in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Assembling Cake Balls

Then, I melted white chocolate squares in a bowl, took the chilled cake balls out of the freezer, and dipped each cake ball in the melted chocolate.

Making Cake Balls

Don’t forget to add the sprinkles right away because the coating hardens pretty quickly. I put the completed cake balls back in the freezer because they started to get too warm.

Between the rolling, chilling, coating and sprinkling, it took over an hour to make a dozen cake balls. My husband finally came in and suggested I call it a day because I was missing out on the fun outside. They were cute and yummy, but so dang time-consuming. Cake balls are like mini sugar bombs. They were so sweet it was like mainlining sugar.  If I attempt cake balls again I’ll do a couple of things differently.

Crazy Cake Balls

1. I’ll opt for a less sweet cake and try a semi-sweet or dark chocolate coating

2. I’ll skip the pretzel step because as the cake ball warmed up the pretzel stick started to fall off. I think it’s easier to coat the cake ball without the stick.

3. Invite friends over. These babies are fussy and require so many steps. If I had a helper or two, making these might actually be fun instead of a big ol’ drag.

Cake Balls aka Sugar Bombs

Let me know if you make cake balls and have any good tips for me.

PS: If you managed to read the whole post without *snorting* childishly at all the ball and stick references, you are way more mature than me.

Tags: Cake, Cake Balls, Cake Fail, Cake Pops, Cake Wreck, dessert, food, How to Make Cake Balls, Lemon Cake, Lemon Strawberry cake, Recipe