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Saturday, November 6, 2010

Cake balls from begining to ending with hybrid!!

Our neighbor cut our tree for us, and I knew it was a cake ball moment.  We are having a revival with the Hockers, and I knew it was a cake ball moment.  I had promised my friend Miss Behaving a tutorial of cakeballs for the visual cooks!
 So........first the ingrediants:
You can use whatever cake mix and frosting you want. We have done strawberry with strawberry frosting and dipped in white chocolate.  Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting dipped in chocolate. The possibilities are endless.  This is just what I did today.
Bake cake as usual, making sure you grease and flour the pan.  This will make for easy removal from the pan.
I have a 50 year old stove and the smallest one still in existence I am sure.  It is Harvest Gold, the original.
Let the cake sit for 10 minutes.  Thank you dear Tony for your hands.  It looks awkward? But it should help you remember 10 minutes.  This is important, the cake will be cool, but still warm enough for the frosting to mix right.
 If you have a pastry knife or dough cutter it is a great help, but a fork will work just as easy.  I get a big bowl out while the cake is in the 10 minute cool, have my cutter available and prepare to mix!
Okay, this is the funnest part, it goes against everything you have ever done as a baker of cakes. Dump the cake into the bowl!
It is okay if it breaks, you are gonna decimate it in a minute, just get it out of the pan!
Now crumble it, bring it to the crumb stage.  Where ants would be happy to carry the pieces off to their lairs.  (Do ants have lairs or nest, holes, hills??)
Once you get it all crumbs, and the right consistency, that whole can of frosting is going in:
Mix well!  It goes like a gooey pudding type texture. 

You are done for an hour or more. Put the bowl in the fridge

I left mine over night.  Why, cause I was tired and I had no one to help me roll the balls. 
Next morning, I had slaves, I mean willing helpers!



Abby is not impressed with Dad's rolling ability, and I think she has an undipped cake ball in her mouth!!! Punk!
Using the palms of your hands roll til the ball is smooth and shiny.  This is important or bits will fall off when you dip in the chocolate.  This is a bad ball, it is not smooth, it is not shiny and it is not round. 
Tony has way too much fun helping. 
That is a reject ball.  We continue to seek therapy for Tony!  Here are some good balls.  You can see they are all different sizes.  When you have different people helping, you get different sizes.  I'm okay with that, if they aren't the size of a golf ball!
I see a few golf balls.  Here is a good close up of shiny:

Pay no attention to the shadow from my hair that needs to be cut. I put the balls back in the fridge to set for at least 30 minutes. Then get out your small bowl and chocolate!  Melt as described on your package.  I use a small bowl, so I don't have to chase the little balls around to cover at the end.
I don't know what those three red globs of stuff are in the back of the microwave.  I am thinking over microwaved cheese, since quesadilla's are my family's main microwave choice.
Careful the chocolate bowl gets hot and the chocolate gets all over your hands.
Stir chocolate til smooth then plop a cake ball in the hot chocolate.

I use two forks, so the excess chocolate can drip off:

This is an individual technique, I try and shake and scrape from under neath to get the bulk of the excess, and then bring over to wax paper.
The chocolate bark coagulates or hardens quickly on the cooled balls.  I do them all.  I got a bit fancy last time and had some white vanilla bark, so I melted a few chunks and drizzled over the chocolate covered balls.
Back into the fridge to finish off the hybrid bags I made for our neighbor and the Hocker's.

I am rather excited.  My dear friend, Julie. It is.  she is selling at The Digi Chicks now, and has this kit Bohemian Fall by Sherwood Studio.  It is beautiful.
I made these little bags and filled them with cake balls for our friends!
The girls delivered the white one to Mr. Will and his dear wife, and the Hocker's sits and waits for them to arrive!
I hope you give it a whirl, let me see the final product!

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Again with the cake balls, why did I click your link? why! why! why! You've just added 20 lbs to my waist..thank you berry much Miss Anne!

Love the little gift boxes you made. Did you use the cricut or the robo to cut them out..probably gonna need a tutorial for the one ;) ;)

thanks for posting the step by step mouth watering instructions. :)

maggiebean

justjen73 said...

Oh my word, those cake balls look AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am now ispired to make cake balls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Anne, this tutorial is one of the BEST I've ever seen!! I loved all of the pictures. I do better with pictures. Hehe You absolutely ROCK!!! I don't care if you do think I'm a punk ... I would TOTALLY pop an unrolled cake ball in. Just to test its consistency, mind you. Heh

Thank you, thank you, thank YOU Anne!! Now that Christmas and Thanksgiving are coming up, I have an impressive desert to bring!!!

You are THE Queen of the Cake Ball Tutorials and Mistress of the Written Word. I love it!!!!

xoxo - MissBehaving

Birgit K. said...

Yumm!! That looks awesome!! Now I'm thinking I might have to do some too and my list for advent/christmas baking is already pretty long!!

blogdude said...

Thank you all for all of the gratuitous praise of my wife!!! Her head no longer fits into our minivan and we have to drive everywhere with the windows open....It's getting cold at night!!!! Please tone it down a bit, she is almost impossible to live with at this moment!!! Thank you.

Sandra said...

heh i would have more than one undipped balls. not to test or what, just because i could haha
omgosh Anne, you totally rocked this tutorial, i had read the recipe once before, but seeing it in pics with your how-to's, it is now not impossible to make :-D
now send me one of those hybrid bags....filled, please!

xx

Kimberly Gabriel said...

Is this cake ball making and cake ball bag making displacement activity for oh, say, WRITING A NOVEL??????????????

Julie (It is.) said...

Aw, Anne. HYBRID! You've gone to the other side! And they look spectacular!! My cake balls were an abysmal failure when I tried them, but I can see from your snazzy photos that I didn't push through to the shiny round phase, but rather tried to dip in the lumpy dull stage. Which meant that I ended up with lumpy dull cake globs...

Well done, and how cute you look! Mwah!

Mariah said...

Hi Anne! Have you seen bakerella dot com? She does amazing and gorgeously cute things with cake balls! I have her book...someone blessed me with it! Nice! Love this tutorial, by the way. Mine kept falling apart and now I know why, thanks to you! :-) Sorry Tony...I guess you'll have to keep the windows down a bit longer... ;-)

Fhung said...

What a great account of the making of cake balls onto the gifting! Looks like everyone had great fun! Lucky friends who received your cakeballs in such beautifully made packaging!

Anonymous said...

oh my - I have been such a slacker - and I popped in today to see what on of my fav bloggers was up to - and here she is showing her faithful followers some really fun looking treats. Oh my stars, I gained 10 pounds just reading it! I too am a chocolate treat maker for the holidays. I however do not use the microwave. I have a double boiler for the 20 pounds of chocolate I melt from Thanksgiving until just before Christmas. My world renouned product? I make peanut butter chocolate cookies, chocolate pretzels and chocolate covered almonds (I had been doing cashews... but I really like the almonds better). Picture this... you take reduced fat Ritz crackers - not because they are low fat - but because they are flakier. Make a sanwhich with REECE"S peanut butter - Jif will do in a pinch - but the Reece's is so much better. then dip them in chocolate - let them set up... and you have just a little bit of heaven happening in the kitchen. I usually dip it and then tap the fork on the side of the pan to get all the drippies off. I am telling you my dear friends... they are to die for.

On a side note - I obviously survived the road trip last winter - but get this!!!! My mom did not have alzheimers - she had a urinary tract infection. And an incompetant doctor! She is doing very well, living on her own in an apartment in Maine (small town) close to my brother's - and out of the city. It turned out for the best. I just thought I would share. Sorry for the book. I do love to pop in now and then and see your glorious family. My how the kids are growing!

Hugs and smiles sent!

Eileen aka eila

Julie (It is.) said...

I admit to reading this again just to look at cake.