Make Your Own: Cake Balls

Since I love baking and cooking, I thought I may try sharing that love for anyone who is reading this.

This past weekend, I spontaneously decided to make Red Velvet Cake Balls for GALentines day. I brought them to school yesterday and they were a hit! There must be something about chocolate, red velvet and cream cheese frosting that just hits home with my friends. Haha. So, here is a step-by-step how-to for these magically delicious cake truffles.

Here’s what you need:

1. Any flavor cake. I went for red velvet as it was Valentines Day and all.

I generally use boxed because it is quicker and cheaper, but if you have a favorite cake recipe, by all means, please use it!

2. Any flavor icing. I choose cream cheese, because you can’t have red velvet without cream cheese icing!

Again, I went for the store bought because it is quicker.

3. Candy Chocolate.

I tend to use chocolate almond bark as the base and Candy Melts for the decorations, but you can also use Candy Melts for the base. You can use whatever color you want!

4. Sprinkles for Decorations (optional)

5. Mini cupcake liners (optional)

I think that having some sort of container around the cake balls make them look even cuter.

Now it is time to start making them! First you will need to bake the cake as you normally would. When the cake is fully baked, take it out and let it cool. When it is cool, crumble it using either a fork or your hands. When you have the whole cake crumbled, it should look like this:

Then you add in the icing. Start by adding in about 3/4 of the icing, and you can always add more if it is too dry. I’ve ruined quite a few cake balls by adding too much icing, which makes them too mushy and too sweet. You can add icing pretty much to your liking. Mush in all of your icing using a spoon or your hands. You will have a better feeling for how much icing you need if you use your hands, but some people aren’t into getting dirty.

This is about the consistency that it should be. Once you have reached the desired consistency, chill the cakey mush in the fridge for about an hour so that it is easier to form into balls. After it is cooled, roll the cakey mush into balls about an inch in diameter. And when all your little balls have been formed, chill them again. When I am in a hurry, I pop them into the freezer for extra fast cooling.

Once your balls have cooled, take them out of the freezer and get out your candy chocolate. Put about 1/3 of it into a bowl and microwave it for about two minutes checking it every thirty seconds or so to make sure that it does not burn. Now it is time to dip! Coating cake balls is kind of an art. It takes practice so if your cake balls don’t come out looking perfect don’t worry about it! It took me several tries to develop a successful method. Regardless of what they look like, they’ll still taste magical. Promise. Place the cake ball into the bowl of melted candy coating and use a spoon to cover with coating. Lift the cake ball out of the coating with a fork and tap against the rim of the bowl to remove excess. Then drop them onto a cookie sheet lined with either aluminum foil or wax paper.

Once you have dipped all of your cake balls and the coating is dry, microwave some colorful Candy Melts in a plastic bag until they are melted. Cut out a tiny corner of the bag and start drizzling. Be careful because the chocolate is hot so don’t burn yourself. Every three or four balls that you drizzle, sprinkle some sprinkles on them so that they will stick before the chocolate dries. Let dry completely, trim off any excess candy bark and place in mini muffin cups to serve. And enjoy them!