My daughter is having a small party tonight and I jumped at the chance to make a little dessert! I absolutely adore baking cakes, desserts, pies, bread and cookies. However, my kids are basically grown up and my husband has been losing weight and is being very careful about what he eats. What this all means is that I dont have anyone to bake for so I am literally baking deprived and constantly have baking withdrawals.
I have seen gorgeous photos of cake balls on Pinterest and I decided right away I had to master these little treats. As an artist, I love nothing more than to create works of art out of my baking endeavors. I think cake balls might just do the trick. I have also already fantasized about being a cake ball Queen and turning my house into a cake ball factory and selling hundreds of cake balls from my home each week.
I have read over several recipes and directions on how to make them so here goes my take on them. For this first time I decided to use a basic cake mix from the supermarket along with pre-made frosting. I have chosen a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I plan to melt white chocolate to dip them in then decorate away to make them pretty.
So the first step is to make the cake according to package instructions and let it cool. One recipe said to put the cake in the fridge for three hours before crumbling the cake and another one said to crumble while the cake was warm. I am going with the majority of the recipes I read and letting the cake cool on the counter on a wire rack.
Now the fun begins! I made about six slices in the cake making huge squares then just let the cake tumble into an extra large bowl.
Using my hands I crumbled the cake into fine pieces. It was really easy and fun too.
Now I mixed in about two thirds of the can of frosting, just a standard pre-made chocolate frosting and mixed it up really well into a smooth dough, again with my hands. (Really get in and squish and knead away) I am glad I didn't use the entire can because it would have been too much. The amount I used was thankfully just right. When the dough felt like it would hold together I made a sample ball by rolling it in my hands. Pretty tasty play dough! It rolled really nice so I rolled all the dough into balls, setting them on parchment paper.
I transferred the balls to the freezer where they stayed for an hour and a half. I removed half the balls and let them sit out for about ten minutes while I melted six ounces of white chocolate baking morsels in the microwave with one tablespoon of vegetable oil for one minute on high. I stirred it well then microwaved again for thirty seconds. I stirred it up really well until it was all melted, silky smooth and light. I gently rolled the balls in the chocolate one at a time and lifted them out carefully and returned them to the parchment paper. I sprinkled them with multi colored sprinkles. I did the other half of the balls in milk chocolate, melting the chocolate the same way with one tablespoon of vegetable oil. After all the balls were rolled in chocolate I melted another half cup of chocolate morsels and squiggled them over the white cake balls. One thing to remember is to never try to re-melt chocolate. It does some sort of strange chemical change and gets really hard and will ruin any fresh chocolate you might have added to the batch! I learned this the hard way and that is why I ended up using milk chocolate for the other half of the balls!
I am really happy with the finished product. I chilled them again before serving. They are delicious! Making them satisfied all my baking desires. They are fun to make, they are exquisite to look at and they taste fantastic. There are so many possibilities and variations for types of cake and frosting plus endless ways to decorate. Cake ball success!
