Thursday, December 4, 2014

Cake Balls for Christmas Gifts: Decadent, Delicious and Different!

We've made a couple hundred cake balls this week.... so in light of the fact that we've played with them before, I'm going to show you that post... and some new pics.

These cake balls are actually made from Heath bar brownies (Brownies made fudgy style and then toss in a bag of those decadent Heath chips... yes, the whole bag!) When they're done and cool, I take off the outside edge of the huge brownie pan and feed those delicious "scraps" to the kids... and then we mash the rest of the brownies in a big bowl...




And for brownies, they're fudgy already, so no need to add frosting to the mix!

Shape them into quarter-sized balls.... Dip in slightly melted milk chocolate....

And chill!   

Then we did the same with the carrot cake, so imagine this...

Carrot cake Math.

We doubled everything. Great math lesson, right? Math mixed with science and four-year-olds, my favorite combo!

EXCEPT when you accidentally TRIPLE the flour and double everything else... because youse know what we had to do then. We had to add in another whole recipe to make the ratio come out correctly.

THREE CARROT CAKES. 




So we had carrot cake snack after school.... We froze 36 full sized cupcakes (which will become a Christmas gift for someone!)  And we made about 100 carrot cake balls.

For the carrot cake balls we smushed carrot cake (a whole cake's worth) with about a cup and a half of homemade cream cheese frosting....

And then we formed it into balls like above. 

Pictures, you ask????




OY. I was too busy trying to keep them all alive while we were doing the cakes, doing fittings for their Nativity picture, doing homemade 4-year-old Merry Christmas Mom and Dad cards!

YIKES!!!!! Two adults, and we honestly didn't stop to breathe.... and tomorrow and Friday look just as busy because we don't have until the 25th to get things done. Our school has a two week vacation so my little ones last day here is December 18th.  So we're on countdown!!!  And Finn likes to HELP US:




Except that we're doing a Help the Homeless project on the 20th with a nice crew of kids here, but that's another blog!

Here's the original CAKE BALLS post:

So I made these wonderful cupcakes, homemade, searching for the perfect white or golden cupcake recipe....

"Betty Crocker's Light Golden Cake"

and then decided not to use the convection setting on the oven because it was already hot in the kitchen.

BIG MISTAKE.

So THEN we salvaged as much as we could... :)

Tossed the dark bottoms to Libby-the-Poodle...



And crushed the remaining cupcakes into crumbs.

I had Casey make butter icing:



1 cup soft butter
4 cups confectioners (powdered sugar)
3 teaspoons almond or vanilla (she used almond, I love this girl!!!)
1/4 cup milk

Mix butter and sugar on low, add milk and flavoring, whip on high for at least five minutes.

Add frosting to crushed/crumbled cake in bowl, just enough to be able to shape the cake/frosting mix into balls.




Now came the fun part:

We took three bowls and divided up the crumbled mix.

I added 1/3 cup seedless raspberry jam to one

I added 1/3 cup caramel sauce to the other.

I added 1/3 cup white chocolate chips to the third bowl of mix.

We formed each bowl into fifty-cent size balls, about an inch in diameter. But the size doesn't really matter, because now you're going to dip 'em.

We melted white chocolate chips in one bowl over hot water...

And dark chocolate Ghirardelli over the other pan of hot water.

And then we rolled those bad boys in various chocolates to see which would be crowd-pleasing faves.

OH MY STARS!!!!

Casey and I made so many people happy yesterday.

It was MANIC how happy they were!!!

:)

These are raspberry/vanilla filled:




These are caramel cake filled:



And these are white cake/frosting/white chips filled:



We turned our lemons into lemonade. We turned bad cupcakes into SERIOUS good eats!!!

We saw the glass as half full.

We...

Well...

You get it!!!! 

11 comments:

  1. I want to know the ratio of eaten brownies to cake balls. It would be hard for me not to have a brownie going toward my mouth and one to the bowl to smoosh.

    This time of year is such fun with kidlets around, isn't it?

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    1. Julie, it's hysterically fun around here! Messy, joyful and many, many verses of "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" in loud voices!!!! Along with the Fisher Price Nativity having their own adventures, steam-punk style!!!

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  2. These are SO good! We made them a few weeks ago for a school function and they were GONE in minutes! And I was glad. Really... okay, not really. I wanted to bring some home... But the logical part of me was glad because I didn't need a giant platter of cake balls!

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    1. I am stocking that freezer with deliciousness! SO FUN!!!! And the little ones are reaping the rewards of helping... and eating! We throw the mental math and science in as a bonus!!!! :) I'm so glad you tried these, honestly, aren't they really easy and like a total step above? And folks think you fussed.... when all ya did was smush cake!!!!

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    2. Honestly, I was more worried about the mess. The idea of smashing cake and then trying to roll it into balls and THEN cover it with chocolate? Yeah, I could just imagine my kitchen after that! But it really wasn't any messier than most other recipes.

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    3. Pretty easy, right? And if the balls are a little soft for dipping, I toss them in the freezer for a little while. Such a totally worthy treat!!!!

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  3. I have to try making these this year. Who knew smooshed cake could be such an elegant treat? And I love hearing about your crazy busy life, Ruthy! So much joy and chaos.

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  4. Oh, what fun!!!! And you can stick a sucker stick and make them a Starbucks Cake Pop duplicate.

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    1. Tina, yes! You can do them as suckers or cake lollies.... I like them without the sticks, though because you can put together a really pretty (elegant, like Kav said!) party tray if you have a bunch of these in the freezer. Like instant dish-to-pass!

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  5. Mmmmm. I like the sound of the carrot cake ones! And would just eat the pan of brownies without any mushing necessary. :)

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