I Betchya CAN Eat JUST ONE!

Here they are - the product of our "Martha Stewart" afternoon............CAKE BALLS (a.k.a CAKE POPS minus the sticks)!!!

I think they are the most high maintenance dessert I have ever attempted.  Thankfully, it was a three women show with Emily, Heather and I tackling the task of baking these suckers.  Let me describe to you the process:

1)  Bake a cake.  Any cake you like.  Allow it to cool.  (This part is EASY PEEZY).

2)  Crumble the cake into small pieces.  (Another easy - and FUN! - step). 

3)  Mix in some icing of your choice.  Use about 3/4 of the container.  (The messiness begins....)

4)  Roll the resulting batter-like substance into small balls and place in the freezer for about 15 minutes.  They should be covered with saran wrap while cooling.  Speaking of which, I HATE THAT STUFF!  I mean, I realize it's job description involves "clinging"....but COME ON!  Sometimes, it's just TOO MUCH!

5)  Start melting chocolate.  We used a double boiler because Em's a genius.

6)  Remove the balls from the freezer.  Use a toothpick to dip each one into the melted chocolate.  This part is tricky and took us a few attempts to master.  The chocolate needs to be cooled a WEE BIT before you begin dipping.  And make sure you let the extra chocolate drip off for several seconds!!!

7)  Put the balls in the fridge and begin to prepare the "decorating chocolate".  This, of course, is an optional step but one that we felt was IMPERATIVE.  Turns out, it also caused us the most stress!  Did you know that water-based food colouring turns melted chocolate into some sort of disgusting and un-workable paste?!  WELL, IT DOES!  After TWO attempts at making some February-red chocolate, Heather GOOGLED to find out that you need to use powder or oil-based food colouring for the chocolate to maintain it's melty consistency.  WHO KNEW?!  Alas, we had to switch directions and melt some regular chocolate chips with which to decorate.

8)  Remove the balls from the fridge.  Put your decorating chocolate into a small ziplock bag.  Cut a TINY hole in the corner and DRAW, DOODLE and DRIZZLE the heck out of those cake balls!!!

9)  Put back in fridge.  Allow chocolate to harden. 

10)  Enjoy with FRIENDS :)

I think the entire process started around noon (and this does not include the running around and looking for icing and baker's chocolate) and we finished around 6ish.  But, who doesn't LOVE some quality time with loved ones in the kitchen?! 

The cake balls taste DELICIOUS in an OH-MY-GOSH-I-MAY-GO-INTO-A-SUGAR-COMA kinda way.  The good news is - the recipe makes about 40-50 and they go quite delightfully with a regular tea.  See where this is going?  The end result is many-a-tea-parties with nothing but steeping left to do!

Try it out and let us know how it goes!  Remember - you can mix and match any cake/icing/chocolate combo......just don't use water-based food colouring!!!