Cake Balls

Tomorrow is Andy's birthday, so he asked me to make a treat for his class.  Always the overachiever, he didn't want anything as mundane as cupcakes.  No, he asked me to make cake balls.  It's not that cake balls are that difficult to make, because they aren't, they are just very time consuming.  First you have to make the cake and let it cool, then add the frosting, then roll the balls and put them in the freezer for a couple of hours.  Then you have to dip and decorate (or cover all your mistakes) them.

I made the cake early in the day so that was no problem, but once I picked the kids up from school we were on the go with activities.  While I was making dinner for Charlie and the kids I also formed the balls and stuck them in the freezer so they could set while I went out to dinner with a friend.  Once I got home it took me a bit to get into the dipping mode, so I started kind of late.

Melting chocolate is not my forte.  It doesn't seem that difficult, I mean how hard is it to melt those little chocolate disks?  Apparently it is very difficult, because I always over cook the chocolate so that it is actually hard and creamy (more like frosting) than smooth and runny.  They didn't turn out exactly as I would have liked, and when the chocolate missed a spot the cake stuffing started pouring out the holes, but they turned out pretty well for my second attempt.  Also, thanks to the tutelage of my chocolate-making friend, Terri, I have learned the art of drizzling another color icing on top to hide your mistakes.  Okay, I've learned about it, that doesn't mean I actually do it that well.  She makes it look so much easier than it really is.

So at 1:30 a.m. this morning I went to bed after completing the cake balls.  This morning Charlie and Andy helped me bag and tie them before they left for school.  Thankfully Andy was actually very appreciative of my efforts.  He may actually be starting to get it in his ripe old age of nine.

Here are a few pictures.  One is of four finished balls and the other is the finished product that each of the kids got to take home at the end of the day.  Want me to make you some?  Get in line.