Gloriously Delicious Valentine’s Day Chocolate Cake Balls

Posted on: February 13, 2009

It has been a long established fact that I like balls. Couple that with the fact that I like chocolate, plus the fact that I like squishy things, and I may have found the all time perfect recipe. That being, chocolate cake balls. The recipe is on that page, so I needn’t get into the nitty gritty of the situation. Instead, I will give all the gory details of the process of making them, as well as the gory details of how my stomach and ingredients conspired to rise up against me.

First off, I did not use red velvet cake. I used devils food cake. I had fully planned on using red velvet cake. However, the red velvet cake was about $1.50, and the devils food cake was a fabulous $.90. That extra $.60 was too dear to part with, so devils food it was. So I bake the cake, and, to cool it quickly, place it into the fridge. I visited it to make sure it didn’t get lonely. By the time it was cool enough to work with, I’d managed to skim off about 1/2 of the top skin of the cake. This could not be helped. There are simply forces in my body beyond mortal control.

Anyhow, so I squished the cake up in the pan, and then I scraped in the cream cheese icing, squishing that up as well. This process can be best described as…squishy. At this point, I was feeling a little wary of this recipe, to be honest. See, there’s something a little too “slimy 4 year old” about mushing up the icing and the cake into a gloppy pile. I rolled them into balls and placed them on a pan, this made them seem a bit more respectable. Then off they went into the fridge to chill for awhile.

So, I didn’t actually have any chocolate bark, as the recipe calls for. I did, however, have a delightfully large bag of chocolate chips. So I dumped some in a bowl with a bit of butter, and melted away. I’m really bad at this, I should mention. I know that melting just chocolate chips results in chunky disaster, and I know that butter will eliminate the problem. I never remember how much butter, though. I’ll figure it out, and then 1/2 a year later when I want to do it again, I’ve completely forgotten any proper ratio. As a result, the first 1/2 of these babies had entirely too much chocolate glooped onto them. And then I ran out of butter. D’oh! Shortening to the rescue! I put in plenty of that with the next batch of chocolate chips, and the mixture was much more appropriately runny. I was also out of was paper, but luckily plastic wrap seemed to work just as well.

And back they went into the fridge. I didn’t get to decorate them with seasonally appropriate colorage until the next day, and a few of them had apparently wandered off and crawled down Drew’s throat by that time. Or were simply a proper sacrifice to the Shortening Gods, it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. So I zapped some white chocolate and mixed in some coloring, shoved it all in a ziplock bag with a hole in one corner, and decorated away.

chocolate balls

The frosting came out rather erratically, and I was worried it was gonna be all Disaster City. However, they seemed to come out ok. Not gourmet or anything, mind you, but still visually delicious and all that. In a way, it’s actually a good thing to make and eat desserts that don’t look professional. See, professional can look too efficient in that “This uses the exact amount of chocolate that it needs and NO MORE” kind of way. The sloppiness of some food often just means they’ve got extra delicious in them.

So the Shortening Gods saw what their offspring had wrought, and it was good in their eyes. And their light shone down upon the balls, illuminating them in deliciousness and calories. And they spake forth, chanting, “Go forth and be tasty, and slide down the gullets of the true cravers of the balls, and be pleasing for this Day of Valentines.” And the balls went forth, doing as commanded, and it was good.

Chocolate balls with light shining down from above