Recently I posted a recipe for Oreo Truffles. A friend put one near my mouth and announced, “Eat it.” He did not say I would like it, because he knows me and my mild chocolate addition.
For that treat, you pulverize Oreo cookies, mix with cream cheese, form into balls, dip into melted chocolate, refrigerate, wait — and you do have to wait, folks — and then indulge.
Sometimes things just happen by chance. Suzen had finished off the last Oreo Truffle — at least I admit my addiction — and I was off to scout new cookbooks. And there, on the shelf, is this very modestly sized book titled Cake Balls: Amazingly Delicious Bite-Size Treats by Robin Ankey and Charlotte Lyon of the Cake Ball Company.
Here’s the idea. Make a cake. Make icing. Don’t ice the cake. Crumble it. Add in the icing and mix with your fingers — licking your fingers here would be a violation of the health code but I’m going to let you proceed on your own honor. More or less.
Back to that cake crumb and icing mix. You now have this sticky mixture that is dough-like and yet moist. Use a cookie scoop or your hands to form bite-sized balls. Roll them into perfect spheres. Freeze them for 2 hours. Dip in melted chocolate and decorate, if you desire, with more chocolate, nut, sprinkles, … The potential here is endless.
Cake Balls comes with full instructions and their personal recipes for cakes and icings:
- Basic chocolate, vanilla, and yellow cakes
- Basic chocolate, vanilla, and cream cheese icings
Use those foundations, and you get, what else, a basic cake ball. But you can go so much further with the decorations:
- Toffee bits or chopped up Snickers bars
- Chopped Andes mints or ground up candy canes
- Ground up cookies [gingerbread, chocolate wafers, …]
- Cut up dried cherries or other fruit such as dried apple slices sprinkled with cinnamon
- Pistachio, walnut or pecan halves, placed on top and glued in place with a thick dollop of ganache
- Milk chocolate and coconut for a German Chocolate feel
- White chocolate and silver sprinkles for a wedding cake effect
- Stripes of dark chocolate anointed with cinnamon
Cake Balls presents with excellent, beautifully styled photos that will both inspire you and serve as a roadmap.
You can do this. Your kids can do it. You can make the cake balls in advance, freeze them, and then let a herd of kids dip and decorate. It’s a perfect kids’ party idea. Just do it outdoors on a wooden table that you can hose down.
No, Suzen has not seen this book yet. I’m saving it as a surprise. I just don’t know quite what to say to her to begin our cake ball adventure. Perhaps:
“Wanna get your hands dirty?”
Or:
“About those Oreo Truffles, the ones you finished off without me? Since you owe me…”
I need a script writer.