EASTER MINI CHICK CAKEBALL DECORATIONS

                                                                               Peep! 

So cute, eh?

I was contemplating making white chocolate chicks, but felt that my chocolate plastic tutorial posts that people have been visiting like crazy since I posted them a while back were done to death around the foodie world.

I needed inspiration.  I hate the taste of fondant and royal icing isn’t any better.  I love buttercream but making buttercream roses are so Safeway!   I’ve seen the craze peak with the famous Cakeballs and Cakepops that have been popularized by Bakerella.  The other day, on a stroll past a Starbucks, I saw Cakepops displayed along with Gargantuan Cupcakes in the glass display in front of the baristas.   You know food trends have peaked when they hit Starbucks and now that I’ve seen macarons at Costco,  you know they are so passé!

But I do wish I could start a trend.  hee hee!

Last night, while brainstorming ideas to bake before Easter weekend, I had an epiphany of sorts.  Of all the trends, I thought about  how yummy cakeballs really are.  They’re moist and they’re quite sturdy with the chocolate coating.  They are easy to decorate.  They’re cute!   How could I go wrong with that?  I was going to bake a batch of cupcakes and mash them with buttercream to produce a whole flock of chick cake balls like I did last Easter.   But I’ve done that already.   I was waffling between baking cupcakes and making cakeballs.

So I decided to sculpt tiny cakeballs into teeny chicks that would perch on the cupcakes.  The little balls of cake were so tiny I only had to break down 3 cupcakes to make enough to make these decorations.  Decorating the chick faces was not the easiest.  You need a steady hand and tweezers.  But I had so much fun making these tiny cakeball sculptures!

And there you are…my personal contribution to the food blogging world:  Mini Cakeball Sculptures--THE NEW WAVE for cake decorating!    They are deliciously edible, very sturdy and you can make them ahead of time.  You are only limited by your imagination, your patience and possibly,  fine motor skills!

Yes, cakeballs are not new and neither are chick cakeballs, but the fact that they are sculpted into incredibly tiny forms for cake decorating is!    What a concept! decorating a cake with more cake! yah!

Here’s a close-up of the mini chick cakeball sculptures before I dunked them in the candy coating.

I added yellow food colouring to white candy melts to get this shade for my chicks.  Notice how un-chicklike they are right now?  Not so pretty.

In fact, as they are drying on the parchment here, you can see how much of a mess I made with the dipping.  I must admit this is my least favourite part of the whole cakeball- making process.  The mini sculptures have definitely got bird-like features though. 

Precious!

Once dry, I used a Food Writing Pen to make eyes and I crushed a few orange flower sprinkles for the beaks.  

From the batch of 24 cupcakes, 3 were used to make the mini cakeball sculptures and the rest were decorated as usual with Swiss Meringue Buttercream swirls.  I perched the finished chicks on the cupcakes and voila!

The little chicks were so popular with my daughters and I imagine they would be at any Easter kiddie party.   Have a good Easter Holiday everyone!