Foodie Friday: Pumpkin Cake Truffles {Flavor of the Month}

For this round of Flavor of the Month (hosted by Bridget at Bake at 350), our challenge was pumpkin.

Now, it is my understanding that our creation can even just be in the shape of the challenge and not necessarily the “flavor” of it.  Well, I took liberty in that this month since I don’t normally make a lot of pumpkin flavored things.  I made a pumpkin pie once… none of us were all that crazy about it. 

I know, I know… “That’s just crazy talk.”

But it’s true.

So I present to you my pumpkin shaped and decorated, but not necessarily flavored, cake truffles. 

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Now, I think I’ve already made it clear that I did not use a pumpkin flavored cake inside these.  What flavor did I use?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  Inside of each of these beauties is Orange Vanilla Spice Cake held together by a Cinnamon Browned Butter Icing.  Click on the names and it will shoot you over to the recipes on the recipe blog.

I learned a couple of things in the process of making these truffles.  Lesson #1: I learned that I don’t have time to make cake truffles very often.  I just don’t.

Lesson #2: Red candy chips are really powerful, color wise.  You see, there were no orange candy chips on the day I went to Hobby Lobby so I used my mad Kindergarten level science skilz and decided that I should be able to make the color I wanted by using the yellow and the red chips that were available.  So I measured equal amounts of each and melted them.

But instead of orange, I ended up with….

just a really funky light reddish color.

So, I pulled out my gel icing colors and found my yellow and began to add it in.  The color got better and was just about right when all of the sudden…

The whole thing just clumped up and solidified on me.  Lesson #3: You can only add so much gel food coloring to melted candy coating stuff before it revolts.  (Lesson #3a: I am seriously considering whether this candy stuff is something I want to put into my body if it has that kind of a chemical reaction to a little food coloring.  I’m just sayin’.)

So I started over and used much less red and finally got the right color.  That whole process was way harder that it had to be.  Lesson #4: Hold out and look for the correct color of candy chips instead of trying to mix your own.

And once I had established a pattern of how to decorate the pumpkins, I discovered another lesson.  Lesson #5: Dipping the cake balls in the melted candy stuff goes a lot better when the bowl is full and the candy is freshly melted & warm.  Once the level gets too low and the candy begins to thicken from cooling off, you get pumpkins that look like they came from Chernobyl.

So… nuts and bolts.  How did I make them? 

For the cake balls, crumble up your cake and add enough icing so that the crumbled up cake sticks together like a rough dough.  Then for uniform size, use a scoop (like an ice cream scoop) to measure out your cake mixture and roll it in to a ball.  Cover and refrigerate.  (There are also instructions at Bakerella and The Pioneer Woman Cooks.)

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Put half of a pretzel stick in the top of each cake ball to act as the stem.  Coat the cake ball in the melted orange candy coating stuff.  While it is still wet, use a toothpick to draw the stripes going down the pumpkin then set aside to harden.  Decorate with butter cream icing using the #67 decorating tip for the leaves and the #1 decorating tip for the stringy things.  See the picture album below.

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And for heaven’s sake, let your kids give it a try…

Letting Sarah get her hands on my Pumpkin Cake Truffles stressed me out immeasurably, but it’s something I must make myself do.  And, she enjoyed it.

Happy Halloween, y’all!

 

Recipes in this post:
Orange Vanilla Spice Cake
Cinnamon Browned Butter Icing