Rescue from the wreckage: Gluten free Cake Balls

 

Gluten-free Cake Balls

Oh, damn. Damn, damn, DAMN!

Insert multiple expletives here. Oh, $%&*#@$*!!!!!!!

This is why I’m swearing. I had this idea for a GORGEOUS recipe. Orange and blueberry loaf. Sounds divine, doesn’t it? Wholesome and comforting.

Well, it didn’t work as a loaf, so I tweaked the recipe and then made it as muffins. Still didn’t work, so I tweaked again and made them into mini-muffins. Didn’t work once. Didn’t work twice. Didn’t work thrice. … and so on.

And damn it, I’m so convinced that it should work. I just haven’t found the missing link. But these little babies are so fragile that they just about explode in your hand as soon as you pick them up. And let me be clear here – they don’t just fall apart, they shatter into a zillion crumbs. You might be able to tell from the picture above. So I’m not blogging that recipe. Not yet, anyway.

Gluten-free ingredients ain’t the cheapest, folks, especially with a handful of frozen blueberries thrown in, and I just can’t bear wasting food, so what to do?

Well, I decided to salvage something from the train-wreck.

When you have a cake or muffin disaster – when the cake’s too dry, falls apart, burns or crumbles, here’s what to do. Take the (non-burned) bits of cake and process them into crumbs, then add a few ingredients to make cake balls. You’ll get the flavour of the cake, repackaged into something that can go into the lunchbox and can also be frozen. These cake balls were fairly unattractive – the blueberries made them a fairly icky grey colour – so I rolled them in coconut as well. That disguised the colour enough to tempt the kids and my Hubby and everyone gave it the thumbs up.

Because I’ve attempted this recipe a number of times, I’ve got loads of these crumbs in the freezer – I weighed them into 100 gram batches and put them into small snap-lock bags. I can defrost and use them whenever. And here’s another idea – for a quick dessert, make some custard (for a recipe, check out the Bread and Butter Puddings recipe in my eCookbook), gently fry some of the crumbs in butter and then sprinkle over the warm custard. Yum!

And, oh yeah, I know I’m on a bit of a theme with balls at the moment, but y’know. When you’re on a good thing …

Enjoy!

Ingredients

500 g gluten-free cake or muffin crumbs

2 tbs melted coconut oil

100 g desiccated coconut

50 g desiccated coconut, extra, for rolling

Method

In a large bowl, combine crumbs, coconut oil and 100 g desiccated coconut. Mixture should press together firmly without any excess liquid.

Roll dessert-spoonfuls of the mixture into balls. Put 50 g desiccated coconut into a bowl and roll the balls in the coconut.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Makes approximately 40 balls.