Cake Balls. . .

Well, I decided to try my hand at cake balls.  I've seen and heard a lot about them recently so I had to give it a try.  I looked around for recipes and ideas and looked in my pantry to see what I had on hand and got to work.  First I started with a chocolate cake mix and mixed it following the directions on the box and I added some carmel pieces to the batter before baking (not a good idea).  After it baked and cooled I crumbled it into very fine pieces.

 Then I added a jar of marshmallow cream because I did not have canned icing like most recipes called for and I didn't want to fool with making my own. . .

After mixing the marshmallow cream into the cake very very good I made balls with it using my small pampered chef scoop. 

When I ran out of room on my cookie sheet and only had a little dough left I decided to experiment.  I had seen a lot of the cake ball recipes call for some sort of alcohol so I opened a bottle of Wild Turkey (honey flavored) and added a few tablespoons, then I rolled the last of the dough out into balls on a different cookie sheet.  The whiskey balls will go to a co-worker.  The one who always buys my alchohol for me because I'm to lame to go to the liquor store.

 Then I froze the balls for a few hours.  They never did completely firm up but they were manageable.  After a few hours I melted some ghiradilli unsweetened chocolate and grinded some oreos and almonds (each in a seperate bowl) and got busy "dipping" the balls.  Because of the messy hands there are no pictures of this step.  Sorry. . . Instead of actually dipping I put on latex (no powder) gloves and added a little chocolate on top of the ball and rolled them in my hand so they have just a very light chocolate coating.  Unsweetened chocolate is pretty bitter so I didn't want to much.  After rolling them I placed them in oreos (or) almonds and rolled them around to coat.  This is what I came out with.

They turned out decent as far as looks go.  I haven't tasted one yet because I'm on a very very very low sugar diet and I licked my fingers to many times today!  Tomorrow I will try one!
Oh, I only had 1 bar of the Ghiradelli chocolate so after using all of it I mixed a few ounces of semi-sweet bakers chocolate and white chocolate (because that's all I had left).  J said the ones done with the unsweetened chocolate are to bitter but I like dark chocolate so I *think* will like them.  He hasn't tried one from the other batch so we'll see what he think of them.

All in all I think cake balls are cute and fun but oh so much trouble!!!  May or may not ever make them again.  We'll see how they taste first ;-)