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HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY, SUNNY!

Yes, it’s Sunny’s birthday, and as promised, we’re monkeying around to celebrate.

To kick off the celebrations, we spent yesterday evening constructing Monkey Cake Balls. I had never heard of a cake ball until a friend turned me on to the magic. What a brilliant idea. Cake, in a ball, on a stick. Perfection!

Cake balls themselves are quite easy to make, so we took it one step further and pulled together monkey faces using sugary treats for the facial features. More fun, and certainly delicious, than a barrel of monkeys!

Ingredients:
1 box cake mix
1 tub frosting
1 bag of chocolate chips
Hershey’s drops candy (We used the Cookies n’Creme version)
Red decorating gel
Chocolate covered pretzel circles (We used Nabisco 100 cal MisterSalty Milk Chocolate Pretzels)
Baking dots or pearls
Lollipop sticks or skewers
Styrofoam block

Directions:

1. Bake the cake per the box’s instructions.

2. While the cake is still warm, crumble it up in a bowl and dump the tub of frosting in. Mix well. Create 1-2″ balls of the cake/frosting mix and refrigerate on wax paper until cool.

3. Insert lollipop sticks into the balls, and suspend the sticks upright in a block of styrofoam. Lucky for us, we’d just finished an epic kitchen assembly project for Sunny’s birthday surprise and had plenty of styrofoam packaging lying around. Chill the balls again for another hour.

4. While the balls are chilling, prepare the monkey facial features. Cut the circular chocolate covered pretzels in half for ears.

5. Use the red food gel to draw a mouth on the Hershey’s melts.

6. Once all of the facial features are prepared, carefully melt the chocolate chips in a glass bowl. Remember, chocolate burns easily! Dip a chilled cake ball in the melted chocolate and use a spatula to evenly cover the ball in chocolate.

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7. Since the ball is chilled, the chocolate will harden quickly, thus you’ll need to apply the facial features ASAP. Apply the chocolate covered pretzel ears to either side of the ball. Then attach the face. And use baking dots or pearls for the eyes.

8. And look at that! A monkey cake ball you have. Now repeat until you have a troop of monkeys (yes, the proper word for a group of monkeys is TROOP!). Refrigerate until serving.

9. Let your little monkey enjoy! (Obviously, watch her/him closely with the sticks).

Photo: Ashley Weeks Cart