Firecracker Cake Batter Fat Bombs

At my core, I am a BBQ pitmaster, which is why a recipe like “Firecracker Cake Batter Fat Bombs” coming out of my kitchen is a little odd in concept. I like burning things and cooking with fire. I’ve been known to blow things up and singe eyebrows. You would not typically expect to see me with a pastry bag in my hand.

My idea of making dessert is caramelizing sugar on a creme brûlée with my Iwatani blowtorch (affiliate) mounted on top of what amounts to a hairspray can full of butane. I’m ok with making dessert, as long as I can do it dangerously.

What I am also is an addict for any cake batter flavored dessert. In my pre-ketogenic days, that usually meant cake batter flavored ice cream at a chain ice cream joint in a strip mall somewhere. Despite my culinary inclinations, I never really was curious about how to duplicate the flavor in my own home kitchen. I think maybe I felt it was out of my reach somehow, as if cake batter flavoring was made on a remote Himalayan mountaintop by magical elves.

Eventually, I did get curious and start to poke around the internet for some answers. Most everyone seemed to be using actual cake batter mix in order to get the flavor, which obviously doesn’t work for a low carb diet. A few others were using a vanilla/almond extract blend with some festive sprinkles thrown in. Perhaps delicious, perhaps birthday cake-esque visually, but not so in taste. Not exactly appropriate for something called “Firecracker Cake Batter Fat Bombs”.

I eventually ran across an relatively obscure blog who used vanilla and imitation butter extract in tandem to achieve cake batter enlightenment. As you can imagine, I was skeptical, but had also reached a dead end in my research.

Ignoring the “ok, weirdo” stares from Walmart patrons as I hungrily peeled the tamper seal off the bottle and inhaled deeply as I strolled back to my vehicle. I married the aroma together with vanilla in my mind and…

…this was it, and not just a close match. This was *exactly* it. I finally had what I needed to cake batter all the things, starting with these Firecracker Cake Batter Fat Bombs.

Being a parent and going through the motions of rearing one and then a second child stokes your own childhood memories in ways that have always come as a surprise to me. The wide variety of websites hawking products of every possible niche has sort of created a cottage industry for indulging peoples’ most minute senses of nostalgia.

It was one of those waves of nostalgia that struck me as I pondered the cake batter fat bombs I was beginning to sketch out. I needed something to take them completely over the top. You may have noticed that is clearly something I strive to do around here. Have you seen recipes like my Doritos Microwave Pork Rinds?

I was considering some of the mostly-disappeared candy of my youth, and my mind turned to pop rocks. Explosive, dramatic, but — sugar. If only they had sugar free version available.

My smartphone instantly delivered answer: YES. Amazon.com really does have everything, doesn’t it?

Another one of the pieces of nostalgia was the thought of birthdays as a child, which was probably provoked by all the thinking about cake batter. I generally was a pretty well-behaved child, but I had my moments where I was willing to endure the threat of corporal punishment to swipe a little piece of icing from my birthday cake in the fridge. Surely no one one would notice.

Hardened addicts use that sort of logic. It sort of makes you wonder if sugar is actually some sort of devious mind control device for otherwise angelic children.

Ultimately, I haven’t changed much. I still love icing, err…fat bombs. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves — that is what we are doing. We’re eating icing here, but now we know it’s actually healthy, right?

By the way, while they are available, Sugar Free Pop Rocks are a tough get. I called every candy story in my city and only found one that even knew about them. Luckily, the are available at Amazon.com here (affiliate).

So, there we have it. My Independence Day Weekend gift to all of you. Icing. Cake Batter. Pop Rocks. Firecracker Cake Batter Fat Bombs, because America. Happy Fourth!

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Firecracker Cake Batter Fat Bombs

Firecracker Cake Batter is everything sinful made angelic. Icing, pop rocks, and cake batter flavoring made sugar-free, but still amazingly delicious.

Course Dessert, Snack Food

Cuisine American, Keto, Low Carb

Prep Time 15 minutes

Total Time 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings 20 fat bombs

Ingredients

• 8 ounces cream cheese softened
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
• 3/4 cup Swerve Confectioners-Style Version
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp imitation butter extract
• 2 packs Strawberry Sugar-Free Pop Rocks
• 1 ea silicone form and/or metal sheet pan with a sheet of parchment paper
• 1 ea plastic freezer bag and/or pastry piping tip kit

Instructions

1. Place the sheet pan (and silicone form if you have one) into the freezer. It's important that you work quickly and keep everything as cold as possible. Please read the "Additional Info" section below for more information as to why this is.
2. Combine everything but the Pop Rocks in the bowl of a stand mixer and whip together.
3. Place the icing in the refrigerator and let it chill for at least an hour.
4. Remove the icing from the fridge and mix to soften it up so that it is just barely workable.
5. Fold the Pop Rocks into the icing mix quickly but completely.
6. Immediately load a large freezer bag with the tip cut off of it (or a piping bag) with the icing.
7. Remove the tray/silicone form from the freezer. Pipe the icing mix into the silicone form or directly onto the parchment-covered tray. Immediately place into the freezer to chill. This will freeze the water in the cream cheese and butter, which will in turn arrest the "popping" reaction of the pop rocks to the liquid water in their immediate environment.

Recipe Notes

This would be an incredibly straightforward recipe if it were not for the Pop Rocks. We obviously want the effect of the finished product melting on your tongue and the pop rocks going off while your mouth is flooded with cake batter flavor. The problem is that they react with water, which is contained in both the cream cheese and butter used in the recipe.

The solution is to keep everything really cold and move quickly. This will minimize the amount of premature popping that occurs and create a short trip to the frozen state that will arrest the popping by freezing the liquid water that causes it.