cake balls

I made cake balls for the first time last weekend. They are quite tasty little treats and very simple, if you have access to boxed cake mix and canned frosting. I happened to have both sitting around my house. Somewhere, in adjusting to baking in China, I completely stopped using boxed mixes and started baking everything from scratch, even though I had stockpiled some boxed mixes.

It is my new goal to actually use those mixes, so making cake balls was a perfect recipe. In the future, I want to try them with cake and icing made from scratch. I'm sure it will work; it will just be more mafan (troublesome, a bother).

The possibilities are endless with cake balls---What flavor of cake? What flavor of icing? What flavor of coating?

I used a yellow cake mix, vanilla frosting, and dipped the cake balls into melted white chocolate, milk chocolate, and dark chocolate. I also drizzled a little of a contrasting chocolate on top for decoration.

Recipes and tips for making cake balls are abundant on the internet, including red velvet cake balls and a list of other flavor combinations.

CAKE BALLS

1 9x13 prepared cake
2/3-3/4 can of frosting (about 1 ½ cups)
chocolate bark, chocolate coating, or actual chocolate (DOVE BARS)

CRUMBLE cooled cake into a bowl. (You may consider trimming off the edges and top---the darker portions will taste fine but don't look as pretty in the center of the cake balls.) Mix in frosting. Allow to mixture to firm up in the fridge for at least an hour.

ROLL mixture into quarter size balls and lay on a cookie sheet. Chill for several hours in the fridge or freezer.

DIP into melted chocolate and lay on wax paper to harden.