I Made 3-Ingredient Pumpkin Cake Balls, and I Finally Get the Pumpkin Spice Hype

Pumpkin spice season is taken very seriously in my house. My husband is fairly reasonable about it, but my kids spend most of fall acting as though cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves are a food group. I’m the outlier. Sure, I like a slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but I’ve never understood the annual rush to make everything taste like it.

I do, however, have a soft spot for the pumpkin loaves that start appearing in coffee shops and grocery-store bakeries this time of year. So when I came across an Instagram video from @thefoodarrondissement making cake balls out of banana bread, I wondered what would happen if I gave the idea a more autumnal twist. Instead of baking anything, I picked up a package of frosted pumpkin loaf slices from Walmart, a can of vanilla frosting and chocolate candy melts.

The ingredients and very little work later, I had one of the best pumpkin desserts I’ve made in a while. Unfortunately for my longstanding position as the household pumpkin-spice skeptic, I may have to give this one to the fanatics.

What are pumpkin cake balls?

They’re essentially cake pops without sticks, though there’s no reason at all you couldn’t serve them as cake pops as well. They’re made by crumbling cake, mixing it with frosting, rolling the mixture into balls and coating them in chocolate.

The version that inspired me used banana bread in place of regular cake, and pumpkin seemed like a natural swap for the season. You could certainly bake a loaf of pumpkin bread for the purpose, but I was interested in the shortcut version. Walmart sells frosted pumpkin cake slices in its bakery section, which meant most of the work—and even some of the frosting—was already taken care of.

How to Make Pumpkin Cake Balls

I crumbled the entire package of pumpkin slices into a large bowl, including the frosting on top of each slice. Because the cake was already moist and frosted, I only needed about 1/3 cup of canned vanilla frosting to bring everything together. If you’re using an unfrosted pumpkin loaf, you’ll likely need more, so add it a little at a time until the mixture holds together easily when you squeeze it.

Vanilla worked well because it didn’t compete with the pumpkin and spices, but cream cheese frosting would be a delicious choice here too. Salted caramel or coffee frosting could take them in a slightly less sweet direction.

Once the mixture held together, I rolled it into balls, dipped each one in melted chocolate and sprinkled with a pinch of sea salt. I transferred the cake balls to the fridge to let the coating set. It took about 10 minutes. That’s it!

How do they taste?

These pumpkin cake balls have no business being so delicious for how easy they are to make. Pumpkin cake is dense and moist to begin with, so the centers had a richer, softer texture than the standard cake balls I’ve made with regular cake and frosting. More importantly, they weren’t too sweet. The pumpkin and spices were beautifully balanced beneath the vanilla frosting and chocolate shell, and that little bit of warmth kept the whole thing from becoming cloying.

There’s also something particularly wonderful in the contrast between the firm chocolate shell and the almost truffle-like pumpkin center. I may never completely share my family’s enthusiasm for pumpkin spice, but these easy cake balls just got me a lot closer.

If you test these out, let us know what you think in the comments below!

Related:

• I Tried Pumpkin Pie in a Bag, and It’s Going to Every Fall Potluck with Me
• Homemade Single-Serve Rice Krispies Treats Exist, and I Can’t Believe I Didn’t Know This Sooner
• I Put Brownie Chunks in My Cookies and Created the Ultimate Dessert Mashup