Sweet cake batter flavored buttercream filling cloaked in dark chocolate. These simple cake batter buttercream candies make a great birthday (or anytime!) treat, and come together in a matter of minutes with just a few ingredients. They also double as a great back-up if you have a major birthday cake fail… more on that below!
There are certain expectations I hold of myself that probably won’t come as a surprise and I certainly do not believe are unrealistic.
For example, I expect that on my husband’s birthday, I should be able to make him not only a decent cake from scratch, but probably a pretty darn good one, even if I’m not the most skilled cake decorator in town.
I have a pretty good track record, too. The first year we were married I made him mini cakes fitted snugly inside beer-mug shaped modeling chocolate, filled with ganache and topped with whipped cream “foam”. Last year I made one of my favorite chocolate cakes and decorated it with mini meringue mushrooms.
This year, I had high expectations. I was going to do a new cheesecake stuffed cake, and it was going to be amazing and everybody was going to love it.
Well, we celebrated Zach’s birthday over the weekend and the only cake that I had to show for it came packaged in a cardboard box out of the freezer section of my local grocery store. I love a good ice cream cake, but I was utterly ashamed that it had come to this.
I made a few rookie mistakes. I was on the phone while I was prepping my cakes and must have forgotten to grease the pans properly and my cakes refused to budge from their cake pans in one piece. My cheesecake sunk, and there may have been tears as I struggled to piece together a pitiful, crumbling excuse for a cake before relinquishing it to the trash can. My last-ditch attempt was to try and make cake balls, but that was another failure and Zach may have thought I was losing my mind as he found me teary-eyed in the kitchen, wrist-deep in mashed cake.
Around 10:00 PM the night before his birthday celebration, I had to come to terms with the fact that there would be no cake, at least not one from scratch.
In a last-ditch attempt at redemption, I settled on making something that was still birthday-cake-themed and delicious, but wouldn’t require me to stay up until 2AM to finish. And so, these cake batter buttercream candies were born.
While I’m disappointed and still nursing my pride over the fact that I didn’t have a homemade cake to share, I’m not at all disappointed with these cake batter buttercream candies, and knew that I had to share them with you here.
Sweet and simple, they’re made of a buttercream frosting, the sweetness tempered with dark chocolate, firmed up by powdered sugar but made creamy thanks to a Tablespoon of corn syrup (not high fructose corn syrup) and heavy cream.
They require a little bit of chilling to keep the process easy and as un-sticky as possible, but the actual effort involved amounts to all of 15 minutes, max.
Zach didn’t complain about the lack of a homemade cake (possibly because he was afraid it might trigger a mental breakdown where he’d find me crying over mashed cake again) and ate most of these cake batter buttercream candies himself.
Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) salted butter softened (117g)
- 3 cups powdered sugar (375g)
- 1 Tablespoon corn syrup
- 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (imitation vanilla is fine, too)
- 1 Tablespoon heavy cream
- 2 Tablespoons sprinkles + additional for topping
- 1 cup dark chocolate melting wafers (142g)
Instructions
- Combine butter, 1 cup of sugar, and the corn syrup in the bowl of a stand mixer.
- Beat on low, gradually increasing speed, until ingredients are well-combined.
- Gradually add remaining powdered sugar until completely combined.
- Stir in vanilla extract.
- Add heavy cream and beat until combined. Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl so that all ingredients are well-combined.
- Stir in sprinkles.
- Refrigerate for one hour.
- After refrigeration, roll buttercream into 1 Tablespoon-sized balls. Transfer to a wax-paper lined cookie sheet and place in the freezer to chill for 15 minutes.
- When buttercream filling is nearly done chilling, prepare melting wafers according to package instructions.
- Remove chilled buttercream balls and dip in melted chocolate and return to wax-paper lined cookie sheet. Immediately top with sprinkles.
- Repeat until all buttercream balls have been covered. Allow to harden before enjoying.
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puja says
So cute!!! My daughter is going to love these candies. 🙂
Pat says
You stirred up old memories Sam. Dark chocolate butter creams were my dad’s fav candy. When I was little we went to downtown Harrisburg to Pomeroys to buy Mantangos chocolates for my dad’s birthday. Mantangos moved to Catherine Street in the city in 1947 and they are still there. The store is a wonderful place to visit. Still run my family.
My dad died in 1969, the day after Thanksgiving very suddenly. I was 20 at the time and I still miss him everyday. So thank you for a SWEET trip down memory lane. By the way the butter creams are 18.99 a pound. Big hug, Pat
Sam says
Pat I don’t know how I missed this. Thank you for such a sweet comment.