When life gives you ugly cake… you make cake balls!

Last year Rich gave me a really cute zoo animal cake pan for my birthday, which I had still yet to use and decided that I should make cute little mini-cakes (also by using my Mickey Mouse pans I have never used) for my birthday this year. Open box of cake mix, follow directions, grease pans well, bake… welcome dissapointment! I am not artistic so knew that I would not be able to decorate these in order to bring them to their full potential!

Luckily I had some extra batter and made some cute mini-cupcakes (in which I took a box of Pillsbury Cream Cheese Frosting flavored with caramel ice cream topping, chocolate syrup, and cocoa powder in order to change it up and make a more tasty frosting which I highly recommend).

The rest of the cake (the cute cakes that should have looked like Mickey or Zoo animals) I was too frustrated with to try to save. But I realized that I had never made cake balls or cake pops before and they always look so cute & I was not about to let some silly cake ruin my birthday!! Here’s where I crumbled my cake into little crumbs, mixed in about a 1/2 a container of Cream Cream Frosting, and made balls out of them. At that point, they went in the fridge for the next evening when I melted down some chocolate (with a bit of shortening to prevent if from getting too hard), rolled the balls around & also stuck some sticks in the rest of them to make cake pops as well as cake balls.

For a first attempt – these were pretty good, but I have lots of room to improve these (easy to make though: vanilla cake mix, cream cheese frosting, melting chocolates). SO… stay tuned for attempt #1 down the road when I make these again 🙂