And of course when I decide to do it, I couldn't decide which flavor so I bought a bunch of cake mixes, frostings, and dipping chocolate.
What are cake balls?
Basically, you bake a cake, crumble it all up, mix the crumbs with frosting, roll into balls, and dip in chocolate. Sounds delightful doesn't it? :)
My mother-in-law is friends with the owner of Linda's and got some of her "secrets." (Of course Linda makes her cakes from scratch and I wasn't going there!)
** First tip - Bake the cake and let it sit overnight to "dry out."
** Second tip - She mixes cake flavors together.
Knowing these two tidbits made the project a little easier and intertesting because I couldn't wait to see how many flavor combinations I could come up with between the four cake mixes I baked. I would bake a different cake every night, let it cool, cut it into large squares and put the pieces into a ziploc bag. I would let the bag sit out onthe counter unsealed to "dry out."
On my first attempt I made two homemade frostings: cream cheese and vanilla buttercream.
The cake balls combinations I made were:
**red velvet cake/yellow cake with cream cheese frosting, dipped in milk chocolate
**Strawberry cake/yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting, dipped in vanilla chocolate
**Strawberry cake/lemon cake/yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting, dipped in vanilla chocolate
Strawberry-lemon
Red velvet
You can purchase this brand at WalMart or Target
Red velvet cake balls before dipping
Red velvet dipped (on the left)
I am not too good at the dipping and making them look pretty yet. But thats ok, because they are good no matter how ugly they are!
I packed them up in bags and found homes for them!
On my second attempt I made homemade cream cheese frosting and store bought German Chocolate.
The cake balls combinations I made were:
**red velvet cake/vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting, dipped in milk chocolate
**German chocolate cake/vanilla cake with German Chocolate frosting, dipped in milk chocolate. I toasted some coconut in the oven (for the first time) and sprinkled it on top of the dipped balls.
I was surprised to open the can of frosting and see how far down it was filled!
(I used the whole can of frosting and thought it could have used more to make it more moist)
On my third attempt I used: store bought German Chocolate, lemon,chocolate chocolate chip and rainbow chip frostings. No homemade frosting this round! :)
The cake balls combinations I made were:
**German chocolate cake/yellow cake with German Chocolate frosting, dipped in milk chocolate. I toasted some coconut and sprinkled some in the cake mixture as well as on top. (I also used 1.5 cans of German Chocolate frosting this time.)
**Lemon cake/yellow cake with lemon frosting, dipped in vanilla chocolate.
**Confetti cake/ with rainbow chip frosting, dipped in vanilla chocolate.
**Chocolate Cake with chocolate chocolate chip frosting, dipped in milk chocolate
Why I did four flavors I have no idea. I was just curious to try some new flavors i guess.
But my clear favorite is German Chocolate, with Red Velvet in a close second.
Petunia loves the confetti cake balls, but she didn't disciminate on any of the flavors!
3 comments:
Yum!! I'll have to give them a try!!
I rolled my red velvet balls today (for Deanna's b-day), will dip tomorrow, but am now worried they won't be as delicious as yours since I didn't see these tips. How much yellow cake do you add in? Can you tell much of a difference with the different flavored chocolates? The homemade icing is much better too, huh? Dang!
Katrena- When I mixed in the vanilla or yellow cake mix, I probably only used about 20% of it. It was just to break up the flavor a little bit. I think next time I try the red velvet I will mix in a little chocolate fudge instead or do straight up red velvet.
As far as the homemade frosting I do prefer homemade cream cheese and butter cream over the canned. But for the other flavors it doesn't make sense to make them from scratch. I haven't tried any cake balls with canned cream cheese or butter cream but I am sure its still delicious. You can go too wrong with cake, frosting and dipping chocolate, right!!
Let me know how they turn out. I am sure yours will also look delectable! :)
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