Black & White Cake Balls

The Singapore arm of Melissa shoes was unveiling its new Fall/Winter 2015 Melissa Star Walker collection. At their product launch event, they wanted to have 300 cake balls, completely covered in silver dragees. Now, dragees are really really crunchy. I was concerned that someone might break a tooth! Sure, silver dragee-covered cake balls would probably taste good (the cake part), but I would classify them as texturally disturbing overall.  So, we went with a different, and definitely more tasty design.

black and white cake balls with silver dragee accent

The cake balls themselves are made of strawberry cake, crumbled and swirled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. Lots and lots of cake crumbs to roll to make up 300 cake balls! I managed to catch a fair bit of Game of Thrones, season 5 episodes while making these babies! 

strawberry cake balls

I made these cake balls in advance and made sure to freeze them solid before dipping them in melted chocolate. If you dip room temperature cake balls in chocolate, you are going to end up with a big mess - all the cake crumbs contaminating the the dipping chocolate. For more tips on how to make cake balls, check out my how-to page here. 

black glittery sanding sugar, up close

Like these cake pops that I sponsored for the Club 100 fundraising dinner, the cake balls were decorated in a simple yet elegant way, using glittering sanding sugar. Half of the cake balls were dipped in dark chocolate, dyed black using powdered food colouring, and then rolled in black glittering sanding sugar. The other half were dipped in white chocolate and rolled in white glittering sanding sugar. 

black cake ball army

white cake ball army

To accent the cake balls, and tie it in with the silver Starwalker theme, I topped each cake ball with a single silver dragee and placed them in silver candy foil paper. This way, they still got the silver dragee that they originally wanted. Before deciding on the silver dragee, I actually took some time to cut out 150 fondant stars and dry-brush them with silver luster dust, but in the end, they just didn't have that sparkle and looked a bit dull and even little cartoony (my mini-star cutter makes rounded-edged stars and not precision pointy ones). 

black and white-silver accented cake balls

Congrats to Melissa shoes on the launch of the new Melissa Star Walker collection. I hope these cake balls delighted the guests at their product launch party and added a sweet sparkle to their event.