Doorstep Desserts is a new dessert subscription box – get everything you need weekly (or biweekly or monthly) to make a fun dessert at home. Every box includes pre-portioned and pre-made components for the final dessert.
This was a fun quick dessert that I shared with my coworkers. I arrived home on Thursday night, and there was an adorable little box waiting for me. I didn’t even make it upstairs before I opened it and started making these truffles. Though, to be fair, I would call them a cake pop and not a truffle.
The box comes with a photo of the finished dessert. The directions are on the back.
There’s a separate ingredients and nutrition facts card. For $18 per box of pre-made ingredients I didn’t really expect high-end ingredients although this subscription might find a better market for this box by reducing the amount of preservatives.
For comparison, here’s the ingredients in a Wegman’s Ultimate Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting
Sugar, Water, Butter, Unsweetened Cocoa, Enriched Bleached Flour (Bleached Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Folic Acid), Whole Milk, Soybean Oil, Whole Eggs. Contains 2% or less of the following:Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate), Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Emulsifiers (Sorbitan Monostearate, Polysorbate 60, Mono and Diglycerides), Phosphoric Acid, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor, Sodium Propionate (Preservative).
They aren’t too different, but Wegmans doesn’t include corn syrup or propylene glycol.
The packaging was great – a few bags of pre-made chocolate cake (which I was tempted to eat as it was) baked into little wedge shaped chunks and the three well-sealed tubs of tasty gooey sugary deliciousness.
The instructions were well-written and simple.
Dump cake, icing, and strawberry goo (I think goo is the technical term here – it was basically a strawberry sauce/gel) into a bowl. Check.
Stir is around until everything is combined. Check.
Form balls. They said it makes 10 1.5inch balls. I made 20 1+inch balls.
Place in fridge to firm up. At this point I finally went upstairs and put on my pajamas, which is usually the first thing I do when I get home. I tell myself it is so the cat doesn’t get fur on me, but really, it’s because I love being in my jammy jams! Sorry, no pic of me in my jammies.
Melt chocolate icing. Dip balls and place on plate. Don’t mind if I do! I ended up using a toothpick for this, so there are little holes in the top. This reminded me of the peanut butter balls Brandy and I used to make. She can tell you what they always ended up looking like. [Brandy: well, they looked like balls. We may or may not have made extra items to go with them]
Place balls back in the fridge to firm up the icing. By some miracle, I managed to not eat any that night, but I totally had one at breakfast the next morning when I was packing them up to bring to work. I ended up leaving them on the plate because the icing was stuck and it was getting messy to remove them. I only ate the one I mangled, I swear!
My coworkers enjoyed the treat! These were a tasty dessert, though sweeter than what I usually prepare for myself these days. The strawberry flavor was very light – they were mostly chocolate with a hint of strawberry. The texture was great – soft and like a thick moist cake, like a good cake ball should be.
Due to the messiness factor of removing the finished product from the plate, if I were doing this again, I would divvy them up onto smaller serving plates before putting them in for the final round of refrigeration.
If I had a toddler or a young-ish kid, this would have been the perfect project to do with them. It would also be the kind of dessert you could trust an older kid to make to help contribute to family dinner or an event. They have to start somewhere!
Brandy’s Review
We also ended up with this box! It was set to arrive during our vacation and we got the box a week late. When I ordered this box it wasn’t really clear to me that you got totally pre-made ingredients. This box is all about assembly a la Sandra Lee.
FYI – even though it had sat around for a week at UPS, all the ingredients were fine. Yes, we totally ate them 2 weeks after the box shipped.
We ended up decorating these and called them “creepers!” They were a fun Halloween week treat but this box seemed pricey to us. Either adding something with a decorative/seasonal flair, improving the ingredients, or lowering the cost would go a long way. We do often add on desserts to our Plated subscription at the cost of $8 for 2 servings. We got 12 dessert balls (plus a tiny one that somehow went missing during the topping process). This was at least double the amount of food in the Plated Desserts, so the price was on par, but the ingredients weren’t all natural (however, Plated desserts ship with your regular subscription, so this comparison does ignore the shipping cost on the Plated side). We are hoping to see some improvements on this box as it goes – everything seems to be a variation on a cake ball or layered dessert (I do have the subsequent week in-hand to review as well). It’s an intriguing idea, and new, so I’m sure that they are happy for the feedback. We think this subscription would be a lot more attractive at a lower price point. That being said, the chance of screwing up this recipe was virtually nil. I am in the middle of baking a Foodstirs kit, and I wasn’t pleased with the directions at all.
Visit Doorstep Desserts to subscribe or find out more! Use coupon code EMAIL to try your first box free.
The Description: Doorstep Desserts provides everything you need to make pastry chef inspired, gourmet desserts at home, by delivering directly to your doorstep. Each kit makes four servings and comes with all the pre-portioned ingredients you need to create an awesome dessert- meaning no extra trips to the store, and no wasted ingredients. No hassle, little mess, and free shipping every Monday!
The Price: $18.00 every week ($22 per box if on the monthly plan, $20 for the weekly plan)
The Coupon: Use coupon code EMAIL to try your first box free.
The Categories: Sweets & Treats Subscription Boxes. Dessert & Confection Subscription Boxes.
Comments
I was really excited about this one, but was disappointed once I got it. First of all, the strawberry gel (it was awfully thick to call a glaze) barely tasted like anything, and the flavor it did have actually leaned toward Cherry. Also, and admittedly this is a small thing, the recipe card said they were sending chocolate donut glaze for the final step, but they sent chocolate fudge frosting.
But the really gross part, and the reason I’m not giving them a second try, is that the chocolate buttercream frosting had a long hair sticking out of the container when I got it- it was stuck to the frosting inside the container. Blech. We almost didn’t taste the rest of the stuff after that, but after inspecting it all closely, we deemed it hair-free and just used our own chocolate frosting.
Oh no! The hair would have been a bit much for me, too. That is unfortunate. And now that you mention it, I think I had the same things happen with the glaze and the frosting, but I didn’t think too much of it – chocolate goo is more or less the same in that situation. You should contact them about the hair!