Breathing life into tired cake... Strawberry Cake Truffles

I did a little experiment first thing this morning. I made microwave fairy cakes. You see, our oven has been a little dodgy as of late, and when in a charity shop yesterday I noticed a recipe book entitled "1000 microwave cooking recipes". So far, I've made these fairy cakes (failure), microwaved mashed potato (success) and microwaved stewed apple (also a success). 2 out of 3 ain't bad... the main problem was that they flopped outwards, which I'd fix next time by doing them in our silicone muffin/fairy cake tin. Shame I forgot about it until after I'd made them. Anyway, they seemed destined for the bin, especially with the number of far more appealing odds and sods lying around after our bake sale baking extravaganza.

But then I had a load of white and milk chocolate cake covering left over from making cake pops, and these chocolate chip fairy cakes looking folorn and pale, though with a perfectly acceptable crumb. So I decided to do a non-chocolate variation on the truffles I've been making lately. I replaced the cocoa with an extra ounce of icing sugar and added a bit of strawberry food flavouring, before dipping in melted chocolate.

Voila. 2 jars of chocolate truffles that can now be sold. Not bad for a failed experiment.

Recipe
This can be very easily scaled up or down depending on the amount of crumbs you have. I used 8oz and got around 24 good sized truffles (only 14 ended up being sold... guess where the rest went)


Per 5oz cake crumbs:

1oz butter
3oz icing sugar
Strawberry food flavouring, to taste (approx 1tsp?)
Around 100g Chocolate cake coating

1. Crumble cakes if not already done.

2. Mix in the icing sugar, preferably sifted.

3. Melt the butter and pour over the crumbs. Mix to a doughy consistency, first with a spoon, then with your hands. Add slightly more butter if needed.

4. Roll into balls and place of a baking sheet that has been greased and lined. Refrigerate for a minimum of 20 minutes.

5. Melt the chocolate, preferably in something with a smallish diameter (e.g. a jug rather than a bowl) so that your chocolate is as deep as possible. Drop the balls in, fish out with a spoon, then place on a baking sheet. Excess chocolate can be broken off later. No, I don't know how to make it pretty.