Triple Chocolate Cake Truffles

Triple Chocolate Cake Truffles
Inspired by Bakerella
Makes about 65 truffles

3 dozen hideously ugly chocolate cupcakes
1 16-ounce tub of store-bought chocolate frosting
1 1/2 lbs chocolate bark candy coating
Chocolate sprinkles for decorating

1. Ruin a perfectly good batch of chocolate cupcakes. Make sure they're humpbacked, missing chunks, and overall just really, really ugly.

2. Rip those ugly cupcakes to shreds. Seriously. Tear them all apart until they're nothing but crumbs.

3. Dump an entire tub of frosting into the bowl of crumbs and mix with a spatula or wooden spoon until all the crumbs are moist and hold together.

4. Using a 1-inch cookie scoop, scoop out crumb mixture and roll into balls in your hand. Place on cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Repeat until all crumb mixture is used. Freeze cookie sheets for an hour.

5. Melt chocolate bark in a small, but deep heatproof bowl or coffee mug in microwave, 30 seconds at a time, stirring the chocolate until it is all melted and smooth.

6. Removing only a few balls from the freezer at a time, spear one with a toothpick and dip into chocolate until it is completely coated. You may have to use a spoon to dump some chocolate along the top to cover completely. Lifting the ball out of the chocolate, rotate slowly above the bowl, letting the excess drip off back into the rest of the chocolate.

7. Place coated ball on a new cookie sheet lined with waxed paper. Pull toothpick from top, and coat hole with a tiny bit of melted chocolate to hide the gash. Top with chocolate sprinkles for decoration. Repeat with remaining balls. Reheat bowl of chocolate when it starts to thicken.

8. Once all balls have been coated, return to the freezer for about 15 minutes to set. Remove and let come to room temperature before serving.

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After my disastrous first batch of chocolate cupcakes for my "Decorate a Cupcake" event, I was left wondering what on Earth I was going to do with 36 hideously ugly cupcakes. They all had weird hump things in the center of the cupcakes, and a good portion were torn from trying to remove them from the pan. Taste wise, they were fine, so it seemed like a waste of time and materials to just throw them in the trash. I could try topping them with frosting to try to hide the deformities, but what about those that had just fallen apart? There had to be some way to salvage those as well. How about ripping them all apart and putting them back together, even better than before? How about taking a page out of Bakerella's book and creating tasty Cake Truffles!


If you've never made cake truffles or cake pops (cake truffles on a stick), you should totally try it. Just the act of ripping apart the cake is worth it. It's so much fun tearing them into nothing but tiny crumbs! It definitely took out some of the frustration I had in making my chocolate cupcakes to begin with. Plus, what's more fun than a bite of cake already mixed with frosting and coated in chocolate? It's a little bite of heaven. Or a lot of little bites of heaven, cause if you're anything like me, you can't stop eating them. They're so tasty!

In the era of reusing, recycling, and repurposing practically everything, these are the perfect way to make use of something that maybe isn't so great. Did your cake stick to the pan? Break when you were removing it? Do you have sunken or humpbacked cupcakes? Got half a birthday cake sitting around after the party that no one wants to eat anymore? Don't throw them away. Tear them apart and dip them in chocolate. Trust me. One bite of these treats, and no one will know or even care how ugly your cake was! They'll be too busy shoveling cake truffles in their mouths!

Making them couldn't be more simple. Take your ugly or leftover cake and turn it into a bowl full of crumbs. Mix with a tub of frosting and roll into 1-inch sized balls. Freeze on a cookie sheet until firm. Taking out a few at a time (they soften up really quickly), dip them in melted chocolate and refreeze. Ta-da! Perfect little bite sized treats! So what are you waiting for? Go mess up a perfectly good cake! Cause really--if you could go from totally ugly to completely glorious, why wouldn't you?