Okay I am pretty certain that at this point I have the BASICS of cake balling down. A week ago I have the cutest cake to do for a family that loves a football team. So I needed to carve the cake........and my new - well I was going to say "motto" is never throw cake away, but that would be totally a lie because just yesterday I threw a ton of cake away because I didn't have time to make cake balls. Given that and not wanting to make myself look thriftier with cake then I am......I will simply say that it is my new "goal" to try to use every bit of cake. In this particular instance I was totally able to.
Also to become a better cake baller (this is what you should call your friends that do cake balls by the way. for no particular reason. just because it sounds sporty. totally expect them to look at you weird though. then laugh to yourself - in your head so they don't think you are certifiable.) - anyway - also.....to become better at cake ball making - I have been using different types of chocolate. Michael's had a sale going this week where there melt chocolates were a good deal - and on top of that I had a 25% off your entire sale coupon - BONUS (gotta love Michaels coupons!) - so I tried those. They melted like cotton candy in humidity (this really happened to some cupcakes I made - ugh cotton candy melts in humidity - who knew? - yeah I know EVERYONE knows - my 3rd grader told me all about it).
Anyway - the cake balls above are the ones that I made to see how the candy would coat. Pretty nicely. Fairly easily. I just need to figure out how to get the cake ball off the spoon without making a mess. Still .... they look like cute little chocolates.
The bulk of the cake mixture went to making these.....footballs. Remember - the cake ball mixture came from a carved cake that was for a football cake. I figured what better way to use the finished cake balls then give them to the family having the party. I asked if they would let me do this - wanted to make sure because you never know when you will show up with something to a party and find out "Dang Patti wish you would have asked - WE HATE CAKE BALLS!!" Silly sounding? Maybe, but you never know when a persons Great Aunt Milly choaked on a cake ball and caused an accident while driving that ran over another persons prized personally genetically developed apricot colored roses that were going to fair for competition and Great Aunt Milly ruined them due to cake ball chokage - was sued by the guy with the roses and won and poor Milly ended up working at Walmart in her retirement because she lost everything in the law suit. You Just Never Know......so I called ahead and asked permission.
They granted it. So I decided to make Cake POPS!! What is the difference between a Cake Ball and a Cake Pop? Duh - the stick!!
Notice that the stick is a REAL BONAFIDE stick this time? Not a cut off straw? I learned - sticks can hold the weight!! Who knew? Yeah yeah my 3rd grader. "Whatev's" as my 6th grader would say.
Basically what I did was roll the cake mixture out onto the counter and cut them with an oval shaped cookie cutter. Simple simple simple. If you do this - roll the mixture out thick. The first couple I did them normal size for a cookie, but you have to stick a stick in them and this makes the mixture less sturdy On The Stick. Of course after cutting the mixture into ovals I then stuck a stick in them and kinda compressed them a bit to make sure there wasn't a lot of air around the stick area.
Following that I dipped them into the melted chocolate. This is a step I still need to perfect. I used an icing spatula spreader thing (they might be called something different at your store if you go looking for them) and gently shaped the chocolate around the football as the excess chocolate dripped back into the bowl - then set them down on a piece of parchment paper to dry. This was pretty quick. Time example - ate dinner - cleaned the table - came back to these and they were ready for the football lines. Since I had some left over black icing from another cake I did that day I used it to make the lines. It seems to me that most footballs have white lines for the strings, but I didn't Google it.
The finaly project I let dry overnight. Some of the footballs fell off their sticks because I - a) rolled the first batch out too thin and they didn't stay attached to their sticks and the chocolate added caused too much stress and they broke off - and - b) I am sometimes clumsy.
In the morning I popped the Cake Pops into bags and tied green ribbons on them. As my sister-in-law and I have learned.......many sites that ship cookies & cake balls advertise that they do this for YOUR display purpose and for Added Freshness. I personally think it is so they don't melt together. Regardless they made really cute little party favors.
The balls in the top picture went to the neighbors after dinner the night I made them. Feedback on them were they were delish!!
These were Deep Chocolate Cake with Vanilla buttercream and Chocolate Mlets on the outside. They really were yummy.
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