Chocolate Cake Balls

What do you do when you are in the middle of baking a cake and your air conditioner goes out before you finish?  Well, if you are like me and all of your cake has baked but a circle in the center of your cake about one inch in diameter, you turn your cake into cake balls.  True story, folks.  I was baking a quick cake for Teacher's Appreciation week.  This was nothing fancy.  I was using a box mix and had planned on whipping up a quick batch of my French Vanilla icing after the cake had cooled.

As I was cooking the cake, I realized it seemed as if the temperature was rising in the house.  After checking the thermostat, we discovered something was wrong with our air conditioner.  I had taken the cakes out of the oven, and immediately turned off the oven so it would not continue to heat the house.  When the cakes cooled and I leveled them, I discovered the uncooked section in the center of the cake.  I didn't want to turn the oven back on, but needed a solution for this cake.  I thought of cake balls because no further cooking would be involved.

Initially, I had baked the layers in two 9 inch round baking pans, using one box of cake mix per pan.  I ended up only using one of the layers for the cake balls, cutting around the uncooked circle in the middle and crumbling that part of the cake.  I only ended up using one of the baking pans.  The other pan, we cut up the cake pieces and ate on them without any icing for a few days.

Let me mention this is my take on Bakerella's tutorial.  It is virtually the same, with a few changes.  I had no idea how to make cake balls, but found her website.  It gave me some inspiration on what to do with my unusable cake layers.

Ingredients:

• 1 box of cake mix (I prefer Duncan Hines, I used Devil’s Food for this batch)
• About ¼ cup of all-purpose flour 
• 1 tsp. of  vanilla extract  
• 1 can of frosting (I used Duncan Hines Classic Chocolate)
• 1½  packages of chocolate flavored almond bark (I used Albertson’s brand, they also had a white chocolate flavored almond bark)

As I mentioned before, bake the cake according to the directions.  When I use a box cake mix, I add a little all-purpose flour and vanilla extract.  Allow cake to cool completely.

Crumble cake.  To do this, I cut the cake into smaller sections, held each section in between the palms of my hands and rubbed the cake until in all fell apart into little crumbles.

Mix in the can of frosting.

Form the balls by hand or use a cookie scoop.  Rub each piece in a circular motion, making sure the crumbles stick together within the formed ball.  In the beginning, I was hand forming the balls.  Eventually, I figured out that using a cookie scoop made the the sizes more consistent and actually took less time to put together.

Place on a cookie sheet or in a glass dish.  Form balls until all the crumbles have been used.

Place them in the freezer for about 1½ hours.

Remove the balls from the freezer.  Now it is time to work with the chocolate coating.

Melt the chocolate flavored almond bark according to the instructions on the package.  Do not overheat the chocolate coating.  For the pack I had, only about 90 seconds in the microwave was needed.  When I removed the chocolate from the microwave, they still appeared to be in blocks, but as I started to stir it with a spoon, the blocks continued to melt and the chocolate got smoother.

Stir the melted chocolate until it is completely smooth.  Using a spoon, place each ball of cake on the spoon and roll it around in the melted chocolate.

Once each is completely covered, place each cake ball on wax paper to dry.

Okay, so I know this looks messy.  Remember, this is my first time making these.  In the future, I will make sure I shake off all excess chocolate before I place them on the wax paper.  When the cake balls dried, I simply cut off the excess chocolate so they looked neater.

Although making these was not my original plan, they ended up being a hit at daycare with the teachers.  In the future, I plan to try some different flavor combinations.