Cake Ballz

Apparently the cake ball is the new cupcake.

"What is a cake ball?" I asked a friend this question a couple of months ago after she suggested getting an after-lunch dessert. She just about had a headsplosion. She then took me to Creme de la Cookie for a quick introduction. I had a headsplosion. This little treat was UH-mazing! It looked pretty simple in its design, so I decided to try my hand at it.

I surveyed home-made recipes online and this is what I put together:

I baked a 13x9 yellow buttercream cake via cake box instructions. Let the cake cool for 30 minutes, then crumbled the cake into a large bowl. I then added about 10oz of buttercream icing to the cake and mixed until I had a play-doh like consistency. I didn't have a 25mm ice cream scoop on hand, so I used a coffee scoop to scoop out balls. I leveled each coffee scoop and 2 leveled scoops made 1 ball about 1.5in in diameter. Chilled the balls in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

I then coated them in chocolate ganache [semi-sweet chocolate chips melted with heavy cream over a double boiler] and chilled them in a closed contained for another 2 hours.

For the stringy design on top, I tempered chocolate in the microwave, dipped a chopstick in the chocolate and waved it back and forth quickly over the balls. I chilled the balls one last time for 30 minutes.

Here's what a dissected finished cake ball looks like:

A couple of things I would have done differently:

The recipes called for simply melted chocolate to coat the balls. I wanted a shiny coating, hence the ganache, but I should have anticipated it being too soft. Ganache doesn't harden, so I used a fork to eat the ball to avoid a melty mess.

I would also opt to submerge the ball completely in the chocolate coating rather than using a toothpick to dip. The coating made the ball so heavy that it slipped off the toothpick anyway.

Voila, the cake ball.