Christmas Baking, Part 1

Yeah, it's only a couple more days until Christmas and I'm just now starting my Christmas baking for gift giving. Hey, I've been busy, I'm still working of Christmas socks.

Yesterday I started it all by baking two cakes. I don't have pictures of the cake because I figured you all know how to make a boxed cake mix in a 9 X 13 pan. I made one white cake and added about 2 tablespoons of orange extract, and I made one chocolate cake, just plain chocolate not Devil's Food or double butter or anything like that. Just chocolate.

Then I took a can of cream cheese frosting (for the white/orange cake) and mixed more orange extract and enough food coloring to make it orange colored. No pictures of this because if you don't have a huge bowl you end up with it all over your kitchen and that didn't look very picture worthy. I crumbled the cake and mixed the can of frosting into it. Yeah, I totally demolished the cake. It made a really gooey orange.... goo! I put it into the fridge to chill.

Then I did the same with the chocolate. Jody almost had a stroke. He couldn't believe I was 'ruining' a perfectly good chocolate cake. But then when he saw me put the canned frosting for German Chocolate Cake (the coconut pecan type) in with the crumbled cake, he walked away. But not before rummaging the kitchen for another richer darker chocolate cake mix and frosting for me to bake in a day or two, just for him....

So this morning as soon as Jody left for work I started making CAKE BALLS! I took the chilled German Chocolate balls out of the fridge (I'd rolled the chocolate cake goo into balls last night). I started chopping my huge bar of chocolate I'd gotten the week before. Jody had already asked if we could eat it because we ran out of Butterfingers.

Then I covered everything in waxed paper, chopped some
pecans and set out a little coconut. These were to top the little cake balls after I dipped them in melted chocolate. I chopped the chocolate and started the melting process. If the only reason for inventing the microwave oven had been for melting chocolate it still would have been one of the best inventions for kitchens. Melting chocolate over a pan of hot water is dangerous. Leaving a wooden spoon in a glass bowl of melting chocolate is dangerous too, but we won't talk about that.

Here are my chilled balls. After working with them for a bit I put some of them back in the freezer because they got too warm.

You want to know why hand dipped chocolates are so expensive? Because it's a pain in the butt! I was not about to grab my balls and dunk them in the hot chocolate like those professional ball dunkers do. I don't like having 2nd degree burns on my fingers. So I used a tooth pick.

They look pretty good don't they? Not that I have a chance of becoming a Chocolateer, I have a better chance at being a Mousekateer or even better a Moosekateer... (Marley Moose, Marley Moose yeah!) The tooth picks leave a little hole in the top of the ball so I covered it with a tiny bit of coconut and a couple of pecan bits. Pretty slick huh? This also let's the eater know there is coconut and pecans in these cake balls. I just hate it when my family members want to spit something filled with nuts into my purse because they had no idea there were nuts in that chocolate.



The recipe on allrecipes.com said it would make 36 Cake Balls. OK, someone likes their balls big. I like to share so I used my little 1 inch Pampered Chef scoop.




Don't they look pretty? I'll box some of these up and give to people like my Mail Carrier. I'll save some for my Mother-in-law. She loves German Chocolate Cake and when I first tried these Cake Balls at my friend DD's house, the first thing I thought about was Jane and making these with German Chocolate frosting. They taste VERY good.... just like when half the cake is gone and there is a little frosting and some of the gooey cake residue left in the pan. Mmmm Mmmm goood!

500 points to the person who knows what movie I was referring to when I wrote Marley Moose.... Jolea you can't play. Wouldn't be fair.

Stay tuned for Part 2 - My other balls.