How to Make a Polka Dot Surprise-Inside Cake

By DStauch

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Printed From https://www.cakecentral.com/tutorial/39221/make-polka-dot-surprise-inside-cake 2024-05-03

“Surprise-inside” cakes are all the rage right now, and they’re just as exciting to make as they are to eat! Although they may seem like a mystery, this simple tutorial from Deborah Stauch (DStauch) of the blog Once Upon a Pedestal proves that with the right tools, even beginner cakemakers can create polka dot perfection!

Read on to find out the secret behind this jaw-dropping polka dot surprise-inside cake.

Materials

Cake pop tins
6 bowls for tinting
AmeriColor soft gel pastes (1/2 t. of each): 113 orange, 107 lemon yellow, 164 electric pink, 162 electric green, 103 sky blue, and a mix of 130 regal purple +165 electric purple
AmeriColor or Wilton white coloring (optional)

Ingredients

6-inch round cake pans (3)
2 white cake mixes
3 whole eggs (for cake balls)
3 egg whites (for second cake mix)
2/3 cup vegetable oil, divided
1/2 cup milk
2 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding
Non-stick baking spray with flour

Instructions

Part 1: Bake cake balls

Perhaps you’ve seen these in the store lately and walked right by them. Like I did. Countless times.

I kept asking myself, “Why in the world would I possibly need that when I can roll a perfectly round cake ball with my own two hands?”

And then one night I had this great idea for an experiment. How about using them to put polka dots inside a cake? Rather large polka dots. But polka dots all the same.

Helpful hints for using cake ball tins:

For the cake balls, I used the cake mix and pudding along with the substitution of milk for the water per the instruction guide. After dividing the batter in half, I further divided half of the batter evenly between 6 bowls for tinting. I used AmeriColor soft gel pastes for coloring the cake balls, and I used about 1/2 t. of each so that the colors would remain vivid after baking. I did not decrease the liquid as suggested or increase the eggs but went instead with the amounts on the cake mix box.

You can see the bright colors in the vents peeking through after the clamps were put on.

The instruction guide suggests baking at 350 °F for 25 to 30 minutes but that sounded WAY too long. My goal was to slightly under-bake them so that they wouldn’t dry out too much during the second bake time. They were done at 13 minutes in my oven.

The pans are non-stick but do require a baking spray with flour to help the balls bake evenly. Clean up was fairly easy.

I also ended up trimming the tiniest bit off the tops to make them rounder.

Part 2: Fill cake pans

After adding just enough batter to cover the bottom of my prepared pans, the cake balls were placed inside. My original plan was to freeze the balls before this step but I skipped it so they were room temp when they went in the pans.

The remaining batter was scooped over each ball to cover. And into the oven they went. Looking rather more like dinner rolls than cake. I didn’t tap the pans or even the batter out for fear of uncovering the balls.

The filled 6-inch rounds baked about 30 to 35 minutes or until they pulled from the sides of the pan and sprang back when touched lightly. I didn’t use the toothpick method for fear of stabbing a colored ball (or hopefully soon-to-be-polka-dot) since the balls were already cooked and not a true gauge of doneness.

Off to the freezer to chill out and wait until the next day for a crumb coat and slathering of white frosting.

It actually worked! Hooray!

The first slice left this design. Not all dots showing but they’re in there somewhere.

After cutting the second large piece, all but one color magically appeared. Perhaps placing one more ball in the pan would’ve produced a more even pattern. Next time. The colored balls stayed as moist as the rest of the cake even though they were completely baked before hand.