Oh, Crumb!

I have a hard time with cake.  Baking cake is easy enough, and eating it certainly isn't a problem.  It's the decorating.  First of all, I don't really care for frosting that much.  But the big problem is that I can't do it neatly.  Granted, I've never taken a proper cake decorating class.  But I've tried tricks like freezing the cake layers, or applying a coat of thinned frosting before spreading the real thing, and the result is always the same.  Crumbs mix with the frosting, and leave it looking not so decorative.

by Bakerella

When I first read about cake pops, I thought they might be a perfect solution:  mix the cake with the frosting, and decorate with melted candy.  The experts make them look so smooth and easy.  Dandelionslayer's sister even gave us some supplies for Christmas once.  So when I couldn't find any suitable candies for the ward Easter egg hunt, I decided it was time to try.  I could make some cake balls that fit in the little plastic eggs, and they would be cuter and tastier and more fun and maybe even less expensive than candy, right?

I chose a blue velvet cake mix, which looks a lot like Play-Doh, before and after baking, and especially when mixed with cream cheese frosting.  Should taste better though, right?  D2 and I rolled them up and popped them in the freezer.

But when we tried to roll them in the melted candy, guess what?  Crumbs.  I guess the candy wasn't melted correctly, though I tried both a small amount in the microwave and the whole bag in my makeshift double boiler.  Not only was the coating not smooth, but it wouldn't even stick to the whole cake ball.

Fed up, I just glopped some candy on top of the last ones.  D2 thinks they look best, but I'm not sure they're really stable.

I'm not sure about the stability of the plastic eggs, either, so I wrapped a ball in plastic wrap first, and popped it in--oops, it didn't fit!  Too much gloppy candy. 

It's probably for the best.  If we'd taken them to the hunt, probably half of the cake balls would have been dropped in the parking lot.  Which is better than bright blue cake being ground into the church carpet.  Anyway, we're off to buy some mass-produced candy that has the advantages of size and name recognition.

How do you solve crumb problems?