Cake Balls!

I have a pretty big love hate relationship with Cake Balls. These things seem to get more popular every year about Christmas time, and well.. .every year I attempt to make them, and every year they are a failure. So I tried again this year with a few new strategies .. and guess what! They worked!!! whooohoooo. So I put together a little tutorial to help the other cake ball challenged people out there.

All you need Is a boxed cake mix, a can of frosting, some chocolate bark and some perseverance and determination. I also got a jar of Christmas sprinkles, trying to be festive and all that!

Ok. So you make up your cake like normal. Bake it, let it cool but not completely. While its slightly warm start breaking it up and using a fork, or a handy dandy little tool start crumbling it into fine crumbs.
Add one whole can of frosting. As I used red velvet cake, I chose the cream cheese frosting.
Mix it completely until it looks like this. I know not nice. This is where I usually gave up as I thought I messed the whole thing up by this point.

Ok.. so here is the thing.. I went out and bought a fancy dancy little scooper thing because after repeated failures I had already learned rolling these suckers in your hands is messy. And you start to doubt if you had done it correctly. And then you have to wash your hands every 4th one .. blah blah blah.. so I bit the bullet and spent 6 dollars and got this little scooper. Worked like a charm.

See... All even!

Big TIP: Put them in the freezer for 20 min!! It will so help you handle them better during the coating process

Melt up your bark.

Hint: Everywhere says you only need one package of bark, but honestly I think you need 1 and a half.

Thought: Think about this.... If you are dipping red into white what is really going to happen? You should be thinking about these things about now.
Ok, yes I'm a finger girl. busted!

Dip the bottoms of your balls in the chocolate. With chocolate side down put them on some wax paper to cool. Once I filled up the tray I actually put them back in the freezer.

Then grab those little suckers by the bottom and dip the tops. I tried rolling the whole thing around in the chocolate and it just didn't work for me. They ended up with a huge covering of chocolate and looked all lumpy and stuff. While the chocolate is still soft add your sprinkles.
All Pretty and finished up!

Now to be honest, things weren't all hunky Dorey like the pictures may suggest. Although I did make it past the texture issue of past attempts the melted chocolate caused me alot of problems.

If I ever decided to do the red/white combo again I will have to revise a few things. The red cake DOES bleed into the white chocolate and in the end you end up with pink chocolate.

So I would do the bottoms the same, dip and then let dry. but at that point I think I would thin out the chocolate a little bit, place the cake balls on a cooling rack and probably pour the chocolate over them, it would give it a more even look I think, and Prevent the red bleeding issues from dipping.

I'm interested in trying some German Chocolate Cake with some coconut shavings. Or a little bit of triple chocolate that I can add some whiskey to.. The possibilities!