Cupcake bites

So, Bakerella got onto Martha Stewart with her little Cupcake Pops. Since I was already doing cheesecake pops for the party, I decided to make her Easy Cupcake Bites instead. They are pretty much the same thing, just less time consuming. This recipe is directly from her site.

Easy Cupcake Bites
1 box cake mix (cook as directed on box for 13 X 9 cake)
1 can cream cheese frosting (16 oz.)
1 package chocolate bark (or candy melts for cupcake bottom)
Colored Candy Melts (for cupcake top)
Candy Cup Mold
Sprinkles and m&ms for decoration

1. After cake is cooked and cooled completely, crumble into large bowl. (The texture should be fine/fluffy)
2. Using the back of a large spoon, mix thoroughly with 1 can cream cheese frosting. (It may be easier to use fingers to mix together, but be warned it will get messy.)
3. Roll mixture into quarter size balls (make sure they are smaller in diameter than that of your candy mold) and lay on wax paper covered cookie sheet.
4. Chill in the freezer for a few minutes, until they are slightly firm, not frozen.
5. Melt chocolate bark and candy melts in microwave per directions on package.
6. Using a spoon or squeeze bottle, fill each mold cavity with a small amount of chocolate. Sorry, I didn't think to measure how much. But as soon as you fill the cavity, go ahead and place one of your rolled balls into it. Carefully push it down until the force causes the chocolate to push up and fill in around the sides of the ball. You may have to experiment with a couple to get the right amount. Stop pushing once the chocolate reaches the top edge.
7. Place the mold tray filled with cupcakes in the freezer for just a few minutes to let the chocolate set. Remove and then gently pull up on the cake ball top to release from candy mold.
8. Now, holding the bottom of the cupcake, dip the top in another color of melted chocolate.
9. Decorate.
10. And, probably impress your friends and family

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What I used:
I used a butter pecan box cake. I only had about 1/4 of the cream cheese frosting I needed, and I used all my cream cheese on the cheesecake, so I had to improvise. I made an almond flavored butter cream frosting and added it to the cream cheese frosting. These two things combined made for a very sweet little cupcake bite.

What I suggest to remedy that:
I think these would work really well with a dark cocoa (preferably homemade) cake and cream cheese frosting. That way the frosting would balance out the cake rather than overtake it.

Problems I had and a few remedies:

• I'm pretty sure the candy mold I used was a little shallower than Bakerella's. I just got it at Michaels. Anyway, because it had such a small base it was a little difficult to hold when I was dipping the tops. It was also difficult to set them down without getting chocolate smearing on the bases.
  
• I just used candy melts from Michaels. The dark chocolate worked the best and stayed melty longer than the colored white chocolates. The colored melts seized pretty quickly and I kept having to remelt them.
• After doing the bases, I tried dipping the tops. The cake had thawed and when I tried dipping the top ripped right off into the chocolate. I had to refreeze the bites before dipping the tops. This worked but presented a new problem.
• Because the cake was frozen, the top chocolate cooled too quickly for me to properly decorate it by myself. It would have been easier with a helper, but I ended up with plain bites because I was cooking solo. They still looked cute.
• Lastly, because I used a light brown cake, I was afraid it would look too bland inside. Bakerella's red velvet is stunning. I thought, "Hmmm...why not just color the frosting I mix in with the cake?" So I made pink frosting. Once I mixed it in with the cake and rolled it into balls, I realized that it made them look like uncooked meatballs. Eeew. So, I strongly discourage mixing a light cake with pink frosting.
• Oh, and make sure there aren't any little pieces of cake not completely mixed in (like you see the white pieces below). They just made frosting a bit more difficult.
  
• I first tried to "frost" the tops with a knife because it was hard to hold the little bottoms. DID NOT WORK. It was a much smoother top to just dip. That meant I needed a fair amount of chocolate. You can't just work with a little bit of chocolate at a time or the cake gets stuck and mucked up.
• I kind of had a hard time figuring out the "perfect amount" of chocolate for the bases, because my bases weren't 100% even my top frosting was a little hard to get right on.