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Snowball Cake: Who didn’t love this classic treat as a kid?

By Christine Lisi Popolizio

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 Major League Baseball  is just around the corner.  Bake up a Snowball cake  with coconut colored the same color as your favorite team to celebrate that baseball is back and spring is here!

I wanted to make something in anticipation of opening day, and I noticed I had two containers of marshmallow fluff and a bag of chips and coconut, so I thought how about a Snowball Cake?

Growing up, I loved all things Hostess (and Stroemann, in my little corner of the world in the Southern Tier, the southwestern part of New York State, Stroemann was king).  Snowballs were my favorite, with the coconut, marshmallow frosting and whatever the filling was.  Ah, the joys and memories of childhood!

Now,  I prefer to make all those Hostess treats myself (I even have a Twinkie pan!), so I present the Snowball Cake.

For this recipe, I used one of my chocolate cake recipes.  You can use one of your favorites or a chocolate cake mix, (prepared, baked and cooled as directed.).  I used a marshmallow fluff based filling and a marshmallow buttercream frosting.  I also colored the coconut New York Yankees blue because I am a Yankees fan.

I’m so excited for this season, especially since the Yankees went much farther than anyone expected last year (within one game of a trip to the World Series).  I love their solid young core of players and bringing in Giancarlo Stanton is not a bad addition to the lineup.  I think I need to buy an Aaron Judge t-shirt.

Here’s how to make snowball cake.

Cake ingredients

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 tbs lemon juice
  • 1/2 cups oil
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 2/3 cups flour
  • 1 cup baking cocoa
  • 2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder

Directions

photo by Christine Lisi

  • Combine milk and lemon juice. Set aside 5 minutes.Preheat oven to 350.Spray two cake pans (8 or 9″) with baking spray.
  • Combine eggs, buttermilk, water, oil and vanilla. Mix in remaining ingredients. Blend well.
  • Divide evenly between pans.
  • Bake 20-25 munutes (toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few crumbs shows cake is done)
  • Cool completely.

Filling ingredients

    • 1/2 cup butter
    • 1 cup marshmallow fluff
    • 2 cups powdered sugar
    • 1-2 tbs heavy cream/milk

Filling directions

photo by Christine Lisi

    • Blend butter and fluff
    • Mix in powdered sugar on low speed on a hand mixer
    • Stir in heavy cream/milk.

Frosting ingredients

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 7.5 oz container
  • 2-3 cups powdered sugar
  • Milk or heavy cream

Frosting directions

    • Combine butter and fluff.
    • Slowly mix in powdered sugar.  Start with two cups and if you want it thicker, add the third cup.
    • Stir in milk or heavy cream

photo by Christine Lisi

Assembly

    • Place one cake round, top side down, on a cake platter.
    • Spread with filling.
    • Place second cake round, bottom side down.
    • Frost top and sides with frosting.
    • Sprinkle with coconut (I dyed mine blue in honor of opening day for the Yankees.  Alas, I could not get that dark blue, so it looks more like the NY Islanders or NY Mets blue).
    •  

If you want to color your coconut, put a half bag of coconut in a ziplock baggie, add some food coloring and shake the bag.  Add a little water to help spread the color around if you want.  Store in covered container.

Go Yankees!