Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Suspense is Over..Here are the Balls

I know you've been waiting forever, but I've been busy! After bunco and cooking for 12, I had to take a few days off! Could have had something to do with the wine, but I'm using the cooking excuse.


Ok, grab a box of cake mix and a bottle of wine and let's make some balls.

Here's what you need:
1 box of cake mix (whatever flavor you fancy - in this demonstration I used a french vanilla cake mix)
1 tub of frosting (again, whatever flavor you'd like - I used strawberry)
Roll of wax paper
Chocolate bars (I used Lindt 70% and I mixed in some semi-sweet chocolate chips as well)
Decorator icing tubes or the rest of the tub of frosting


1. Make the box cake mix according to directions in a 13x9 pan.


2. Mash it all up (with a fork or your hands).


3. Put the crumbled cake in a bowl and make sure there are no big lumps.


4. Put HALF of the tub of frosting in the bowl with the crumbled up cake. Mix it into a dough with your hands. Mayonnaise is an optional ingredient - just kidding! Don't know how that got into the picture.


5. Roll the dough into balls that are about an inch in diameter. The smoother they are, the better (hee hee). Put them on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.

6. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (put a heat safe bowl on top of a pot of gently boiling water). If you melt the chocolate directly on the stove in a pot it will separate and not be pretty. I have a stainless steel bowl on top of my pot.

7. Drop the balls (a couple at a time) into the melted chocolate. Using two spoons, roll them around until they are completely covered in the chocolate.

8. Let some of the excess chocolate drip off and then place the balls back on the wax paper covered cookie sheet.

9. Put the balls in the fridge until the outer shell is hardened.

10. Decorate with the tube icing or melt the remaining tub of frosting in the microwave and drizzle over the balls. After it's melted, I would put it in a plastic baggie and cut a tiny hole in the bottom corner and drizzle that way, so the lines are really small. I decorated mine like dice for bunco night.

You can break off some of the excess chocolate once it's hardened, but be careful. One cake mix makes around 40 - 50 balls depending on their size. Obviously, these need to stay in the fridge. They taste great the next day! My friends have also used coconut, nuts, and sprinkles to decorate the tops.

4 comments:

Sara said...

Yum!! These sounds great! I will definitely try this out soon. Or maybe I should just wait for you to come to town and make them for me...:)

Wes and Leslie said...

What a fun idea! How did your luau go? Ours is this weekend. I'll post about it after.

Kalynne Pudner said...

OWWW, all that chocolate hurt my eyes, after three days on the Flushed French Beach Watchers Diet. Thanks for stopping by my blog today...and yes, you may be right about my daughter's motivation to suddenly quit soccer. Though I suspect (between you and me) it has more to do with a certain young men going away to college, whom she does not want to miss on his weekend visits home because she is off in another city playing a tournament. Just a hunch.

Sara said...

I made these this weekend -- they were great! Maybe you should try and be Food TV's Next Star -- your demonstration was perfect. :)