Pink Snowball Cakelettes

Butter rich mini cupcakes are prettiest in pink! Dipped in pink coconut syrup and rolled in shredded coconut, they resemble a nostalgic childhood snack cake.
 

Pink Snoball Cakelettes

There’s nothing like a pretty pink dessert to lift your spirits, and these little cakes definitely make me smile. They remind me of Hostess Snoballs in miniature. I found this recipe during an online search, but after reading it entirely, I realized that many ingredients and measurements had been left out of the text. Instead of tossing the whole idea, I decided to tinker around with the formula and see if I could puzzle together the missing elements, and I’m really happy with the results!

Pink Snowball Cakelettes

The finished batter will be very thick, but this is by design. This yields a dense crumb, and the cooled cakes firm well enough to be dunked in coconut simple syrup.

I was a little surprised to find that the food coloring was not added before baking. Instead, it’s mixed into the simple syrup. Dip the cakes quickly. No need to let them swim around or they’ll become soggy.

Pink Snowball Cakelettes

After a thorough coating in the sticky syrup, you’ll roll them in coconut. 

Pink Snowball Cakelettes 

Pink Snowball Cakelettes

This recipe makes about 4 dozen. They keep well airtight, and as they stand the desiccated coconut will rehydrate. This makes the cakes incredibly soft and delectable.

Pink Snowball Cakelettes

1/26/21 Edit:

I’ve been making these cakes for over a decade now, as the original blog post went live in 2010. I still love this recipe and thought it deserved an update and new beauty photos. None of the ingredients in the recipe have changed, but metric measurements and clarifications have been added. Enjoy! xo-h 

[click to print]

Pink Snowball Cakelettes
Yields about 4 dozen

Cakes
1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp. (128g) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup (135g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon coconut extract
2 cups + 2 tablespoons (260g) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup (240ml) whole milk

Syrup and coating
1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
1 cup (240ml) water
1 tsp. coconut extract
2-3 drops liquid red food color
or Wilton rose gel food color
5oz. bag shredded unsweetened coconut

For the cakes: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease one or more mini muffin pans with flour-based baking spray.

Cream the butter and granulated sugar until lightened in color. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then beat in the coconut extract. Combine the flour and baking powder in a small bowl; whisk. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk to form a dense batter. Spoon the batter into greased cupcake tins no more than halfway up in each cup. (I recommend using a small 4-teaspoon capacity cookie scoop.)

Bake for 10-12 minutes until skewer comes out clean. Let cakes cool slightly in the pans and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Cakes will be tender at first, but will become firmer as they cool.

For the syrup: Add the sugar and water to a saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar has completely dissolved. Remove from the heat and stir in the extract and a few drops of food coloring. Let cool to slightly warm.

Place the coconut in a small bowl and crumble the desiccated coconut between your fingers to make the pieces finer. Quickly dip the cooled cakes into the syrup, and then roll in coconut. Let the cakes stand 30 minutes before serving so the syrup infuses into the cakes well.

Store the cakes in an airtight container between wax paper sheets.

Follow:
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
32 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Jessica
Jessica
13 years ago

Those just may be the cutest things I have ever seen. And in my most favorite color, too!

April
April
13 years ago

Very, very cute!!!

Unknown
Unknown
13 years ago

So brilliant! p.s. I am jealous of your trees!

Kim @ http://frostmeblog.blogspot.com

Nicole Maki
Nicole Maki
13 years ago

Oh my goodness! I wish we were neighbors so I could make cute things and drop them at your door and you could have me over for pink food. *sigh* With all boys I'm not sure how it would go over. Maybe I'll make this in blue…

Thank you so much for your sweet words on my blog regarding the paper towel flowered wreath. I was ever so excited to see your comment.

Save the Date for Cupcakes
Save the Date for Cupcakes
13 years ago

Y.U.M.

Susan
Susan
13 years ago

Cool! Now that it is spring where you live, it is autumn here in South AFrica! But the pink sure does make me feel happy!

Jen
Jen
13 years ago

Snoballs have always been one of my secret pleasures. These are probably delicious, but nothing beats the weirdly spongy marshmallowy outside of the "real" thing.

Beautiful photos as usual!!

Kathleen
Kathleen
13 years ago

Heather, I love these! They are way too adorable!

Candy
Candy
13 years ago

Love, love these! I love anything coconut and the idea of bathing the little cakes in coconut syrup makes me very happy.

Beautiful blog!

Sue
Sue
13 years ago

I LOVE PINK!!! The strawberry milk is the perfect touch to the snoballs:)

grace
grace
13 years ago

i adore everything about your darling cakelettes, from the lovely hue to the coconut coating. excellent work. 🙂

Rick
Rick
13 years ago

Those are so cute! They do remind me of cherry blossoms and the joy of Spring.

bittersweetsugarandsarcasm.blogspot.com

cookies and cups
cookies and cups
13 years ago

very pretty! I can imagine a little girl loving these..and big ones too 🙂

The Moon Muse
The Moon Muse
13 years ago

ADORABLE!!!!!

Unknown
Unknown
13 years ago

My best friend's husband LOVES these hostess cakes. I NEED to make them some! Great recipe.

Mara Campbell
Mara Campbell
13 years ago

These look really fun! So bright and springy, thanks for the great photos and instructions. These would be sooo cute at a tea party!

Julie
Julie
13 years ago

I never really liked the original snoballs, but I always wished i did because I thought they were so pretty. I'm sure I'd love these!

Cristie
Cristie
13 years ago

Anything coconut is a piece of heaven, add pink and it pushes it right over the edge!

afitfoodie
afitfoodie
13 years ago

These are adorable. You come up with the cutest ideas.

Anonymous
Anonymous
13 years ago

Pretty, pretty, pretty!!!

Anonymous
Anonymous
13 years ago

Mine didn't turn out this cute, they didn't stand up to being skewered, but they were good, so that's what counts right?

Unknown
Unknown
13 years ago

i made these, and yummy they were too! i used coconut milk instead of ordinary milk, and also used it in the glaze, instead of water.

Anonymous
Anonymous
13 years ago

They are a little bit like Lamingtons, I think.

Anonymous
Anonymous
12 years ago

I love yours! And so I followed your recipe – exactly, exact measurements, exact ingredients – and mine came out awful and ugly. The cakes in step 1 came out perfect, but that was it. I am usually able to produce results, so I don't know what to try to change. The simple syrup coating would not come out as pink as yours, no matter how much wilton brand pink gel coloring I used (and I ended up using a lot) and the coconut just would not stick. The simple syrup just was not sticky. I tried dipping more, dipping… Read more »

Heather Baird
Heather Baird
12 years ago

Well, shoot. I hate to hear that you ran into trouble. I think maybe I should re-visit this recipe to see if I am leaving out some helpful nugget of info to make it work better for others. I've had both good and bad reviews on this recipe. Thank you for the feedback – it's so important to me!

Anonymous
Anonymous
12 years ago

My friend and I just made these tonight. We too had the problem with the syrup not working so I googled simple syrup recipes and found that it should have two cups of sugar and one cup of water with the boil. We tried that and it still wasn't thick, so we had to put it in the freezer for 10 minutes and that worked!

Somehow we ended up with 6 dozen of the miniature cupcakes! 🙂 They're yummy though.

Anonymous
Anonymous
12 years ago

Actually, we just finished them we had to put it in the freezer for about a half hour stirring every five minutes. But it seemed to work. It's quite sweet though so I'd suggest maybe trying the 1 cup sugar but putting it in the freezer like we did.

Gg
Gg
12 years ago

Too adorable! I admire your patience to go through the whole dipping, frosting and waiting one night!

Anonymous
Anonymous
12 years ago

Amazing! I want these for valentines day!

Anonymous
Anonymous
12 years ago

These are so cute! I decided to make them as part of a gift.I made sort of my own version due to the little time I had and the few ingredients I had. I used white cake mix instead of making my own cakes and I used sweetened coconut flakes. The syrup I made exactly according to the directions but I still had a problem with it being not thick or sticky enough. About fifteen minutes in the freezer helped it a little though. All in all, these little guys turned out marvelously! They tasted as good as the looked.… Read more »

Anonymous
Anonymous
11 years ago

Ive made a semi home made version. For the syrup u can
make a mixture of powedered sugar with just enough
milk to liquify then add food coloring and dip.
Make a finely shredded coconut by grinding shredded coconuts in a coffee grinder for a real snow ball effect.

Destiny
Destiny
8 years ago

These are soooo beautiful