Carrot Cake Cake Balls
These carrot cake cake balls are a fun, easy dessert that will feed a crowd! They use a boxed carrot cake mix as their base and have creamy, homemade cream cheese froting.
Ingredients
Carrot Cake
- 1 box carrot cake mix I used Betty Crocker, but a similar brand would be just fine
- 3/4 cup buttermilk Or 3/4 cup milk mixed with 3/4 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1/2 cup melted butter slightly cooled
- 4 eggs Or take the number of eggs your cake mix calls for and add 1
- 1 cup finely grated fresh carrots
- 1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
Cream Cheese Frosting
- 4 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/4 cup butter softened
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups powdered sugar
Coating
- 20-24 oz white melting chocolate
- 4-5 oz orange melting chocolate optional, for decoration
- 1-2 Tbsp coconut oil optional, to help thin out the melting chocolate. Vegetable oil also works.
Instructions
Bake Carrot Cake
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the cake mix and pumpkin pie spice
- Add the buttermilk, melted butter, and eggs. Beat on low speed for 30 seconds, then increase to medium and beat for 2 minutes.
- Fold in the grated carrots until evenly combined.
- Pour batter into a greased baking pan (any size will do, but I like to use a 9x13 since it bakes faster in a large pan) and bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean
- Allow the cake to cool completely
Make Cream Cheese Frosting
- Beat the softened cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy.
- Add the vanilla extract, then gradually mix in the powdered sugar until well combined.
Form Cake Balls
- Once the cake has cooled, crumble it into fine crumbs using your hands or a food processor. Store your crumbs in a large bowl.
- Add the cream cheese frosting a little at a time to your crumbs. Start with about half and work your way up. You’ll likely use most of the frosting, but you don’t want to use too much!
- Mix until the crumbs stick together when pressed and can be rolled into a ball.
- Roll the mixture into 1-inch balls and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes (or speed things up and use the freezer for 15 minutes).
Coat the Cake Balls
- Melt the white chocolate or candy melts according to the package instructions. I would recommend doing this in chunks and not melting all your chocolate at once. Otherwise, the chocolate might harden before you can use it all.
- Add a little bit of coconut oil (or vegetable oil) to the melted chocolate to make the texture just a bit more watery and easier to work with.
- Using a fork or a dipping tool, dip each cake ball into the melted coating, tapping off the excess. Place them back on the parchment paper toset.
- Then, melt some orange candy melts according to the package instructions. Add some coconut oil to this batch for sure, because you want it to just drizzle on to your already-formed cake balls.
- Drizzle a bit of orange chocolate on top of your cake balls for decoration. I like to use a small icing bottle with a plain round tip for this.
- You’ll have some extra hardened chocolate around the bottom of your cake balls towards the end. Just carefully break those bits off with your fingers and store your finished cake balls in the fridge.