Balls.

Ya heard me: balls. That's today's theme. Mostly just because the other day my husband made meatballs for dinner, and I followed up with cake balls for dessert. All the balls were scrumptious.

Let's start with dinner: Turkey Sriracha Meatballs (thanks for the inspiration, Marni!). Turkey meatballs range anywhere from amazing to horrendous, depending on what you do to them. Luckily, these were on the "amazing" end of the spectrum. They were a delightful blend of ground turkey, ginger, onions, scallions, and sriracha (of course). Yum.

 

 

They were browned to perfection -- crisp on the outside and still juicy inside (They were not burnt at all, I promise that's just my camera! The colors are off). And they taste great with a little marinara and a side of asparagus.

So, inspired by these bite-sized morsels, I decided to make Cake Balls. The first time I made a cake ball was at my in-laws' house in Vermont. I used boxed red velvet cake mix and a can of prepared icing, and coated them in melted semi-sweet morsels. They were dreamy.

But, this being a baking blog, I wanted to try to make the cake and frosting from scratch. (If you're considering doing the same, I will tell you not to bother. Just use the mix! Both version are equally tasty, so save yourself the trouble and grab a box of Funfetti).  Luckily, I happen to love using my Kitchenaid stand mixer, so this was a great project for me!



First thing's first: bake the cake.
In the interest of simplicity, I decided on plain vanilla cake. (I also took a poll. Vanilla won.) Cake, like any good baked product, requires butter. In this case, half a cup.

But it's better if your butter is at room temperature before you try to mix it with stuff. If you keep your butter in the freezer, like I do, you have a few choices to get it to room temp. You can put it out on the counter and wait (and wait...). Or, you can zap it in the microwave (but it tends to defrost unevenly).
I'm a fan of the Martha Stewart method: cutting the frozen butter into tiny cubes (this increases the surface area of the butter and lets it soften much faster).

It doesn't even need to be perfect little Martha Stewart cubes! You can be a little messy. I will forgive you. (Martha might not.)
Soon it will be ready to cream with 2 cups of sugar!

And 4 eggs.

My mixture looked like this:

Then I added the combination of flour, baking soda, and salt that I made while waiting for the butter to soften.  (The recipe asks you to whisk these ingredients together, but -- shhh! -- I cheated and tossed them together with a spatula. I can't find my whisk anywhere. Don't ask me how one loses a whisk.)

And a cup of milk!
I know, it seems strange to use non-fat milk in a cake with 2 eggs, 2 cups of sugar, and half a cup of butter, but you have to save your calories and fat somewhere . . . right? (Also, this is what we had in the house, and I didn't want to buy special milk just for baking a cake).

It poured very nicely into my 13x9 inch pan, and baked to a lovely golden color.

Then, in spite of my apartment being filled with the alluring aroma of freshly baked cake, I had to let it cool. Overnight.

And then, I destroyed it.

Seriously. That's what you do for cake balls. You take a perfectly good, freshly-baked cake, and crumble it beyond recognition. It seems wrong, doesn't it?

Crumby.

My cake was a little too deliciously moist. That, combined with the fact that it had been raining for two days, made the crumbling process a little difficult. But I triumphed! And then I whipped up some vanilla buttercream frosting (vanilla, butter, sugar, little milk -- that's it).

And here's the part that's genius. You take the cake crumbs. You take the frosting. And you smush them together into one big blob.

Then, you take the blob, and roll it into -- well, balls.  60, to be exact.

Sounds good, right? Cake and frosting in one easy bite! But wait, they're not quite sweet enough. No -- what they really need is a chocolatey coating!

Milk Chocolate

I get to use a double boiler! I do so love melting things.

Hmm, but brown is kind of boring. We need some color.

Purple chocolate! Perfect!
Once it's all melted and smooth, it makes a great coating for the balls (which should chill until firm in the refrigerator before being coated).

They are were not the prettiest cake balls ever made, but they were plenty of fun to eat!

I even turned some of them into cake pops! Just like cake balls, but with sticks!