Cake Ball Ornaments – Great Holiday Dessert Ideas

We saw these cake ball ornaments on Pinterest and thought they were a really cute idea for a holiday dessert. Personally, we are going to a holiday cookie exchange (similar to a gift exchange but everyone brings a baked good- its a yummy and more affordable option for celebrating with friends!) and thought these would be perfect. There is a prize for most creative, so we thought we would cheat and bring cake instead of cookies (we figure we’ve been good enough all year to stay on Santa’s nice list regardless of this poor sportsmanship).

Although these looked pretty simple, neither of us had ever made cake balls before, and the link from Pinterest was broken, so we were unsure of how they would come out. However, thanks to a little experimentation and Google searching cake ball recipes, we were able to make it work!

Our Version                                        Pinterest Version

Ingredients:

• A box of cake mix (we used chocolate, but you can use any kind you like)
• oil, water, and eggs as listed on the cake box
• a tub of icing (we used chocolate to match our cake mix but you can use any kind you like)
• twizzlers
• mini reeses (the unwrapped kind that comes in a bag, not the fun size)

1) Bake the cake according to the package directions and let it cool completely.

2) Cut the cake up into little pieces and put these pieces in a large bowl. Break the cake apart with your hands until it is a powdery consistency.

2) Add a couple scoops of your icing of your choice. Using your hands, mix the icing into the cake. Add more icing as needed until all of the cake is moist and sticky.

3) Roll the cake and icing mixture into balls (ours were about 1 1/2 inches in diameter).

4) Place the balls onto a wax paper covered cookie sheet.

5) Put in freezer for at least an hour- this makes the balls easier to decorate.

6) Decorate the cake balls! This is where it got a little complicated. Originally we were going to melt white chocolate chips to dip the cake balls in, but that failed epically. it didn’t go on smoothly and wasn’t all that cute, and then we ended up burning the chocolate!

We decided to get a little creative and instead we rolled some of the balls in red and green sprinkles. This worked out really well- the sprinkles stuck to the cake and made them look really festive! They even looked a little sparkly because we were using red and green colored sugar. We found it worked best when we put the sprinkles in a small bowl and then rolled the cake ball around in the sprinkles.

We also tried rolling some of them in crushed up candy canes. We put the candy canes in a Ziplock and crushed them with a hammer, then put one cake ball at a time in the Ziplock and rolled it around to coat it in the candy canes.

7) Create the topper for the cake ball

First, take your mini Resee’s and cut a small hole in the top using a small sharp knife.

Cut a small piece of Twizzler and twist it into the hole one side at a time. This was pretty difficult to get the hang of, but we got better as we went. We broke a few of the mini Reeses but oftentimes you can squeeze them back together and still use them!

9) Use some of the icing that you put in your cake balls to glue the Resees ornament top onto the cake ball.

10) All done! Now you have adorable holiday cake balls that are sure to be the hit of any party! (Make sure that you refrigerate if you are not going to use them for a while, due to the icing)

As you can see, these turned out very well! They were pretty easy and super cute. The only thing we really changed was coating the balls in sprinkles rather than white chocolate. If you think of any other ways to decorate them, let us know in the comments below!

We’ll be posting a couple more holiday-inspired Pinterest Projects next week, be sure to check back! In the meantime, feel free to browse through some of our other festive posts: our homemade Peppermint Candy Plate, our holiday Hot Chocolate Toppers, and our Candy Cane Kiss Brownies!

Check out some of our other shenanigans:

                        
Candy Cane Heart Cupcakes           Brownie Inside of Cupcake            Candy Kiss Mini Cupcakes