cake bites

I'll admit it: I was really curious about these delicious-looking cake balls* by Bakerella. I just learned about her site and have never made anything from it, but her pictures are adorable, and the recipe was certainly easy enough. Make and cool a cake, crumble it, stir in frosting, form into balls, dip in melted chocolate. Extra credit: drizzle with additional chocolate to make them even prettier. Bakerella even lets you use cake mix and canned frosting, but 1) that sounded less appealing and 2) I didn't have any box stuff on hand anyway. Her recipe was for red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, but I don't know why you couldn't use any combo you find appealing.

I used the King Arthur's Flour Baker's Companion devil's food cake recipe - just because I had the ingredients - and the Hey There, Cupcake! cream cheese frosting recipe. By the way, it has just occurred to me that on a baking blog, it might be nice to post the recipes. However, I also don't know whether it's bad form to post recipes from books, even if I credit them. Help me out here, folks - etiquette check? If you say yes, I'll post them.

Baking and crumbling the cake and mixing in the frosting are easy-peasy, and the mixture rolled up nicely into about 80 balls. (I had only made 3/4 of the cake recipe due to an egg shortage.) I had a little trouble dipping the cake bites, but they turned out fine, just not very smooth on top nor as pretty as I would've liked. Next time, I'll melt more chocolate to have a deeper dipping pool, and I'll refrigerate them longer before dipping. After all that stirring, rolling, and dipping, I was too lazy to decorate them. Oh well. My office still ate them in about eight minutes flat so they clearly tasted okay! Even my friend Anna, who is definitely a baking inspiration, ate three of them; another good sign.

Here's a photo. (Note: Josh is giving me tips on how to photograph baked goods. His most recent tip: use the other camera. However, I don't find it as easy to download and manage the photos off his camera, so you'll have to make do with this semi-crappy picture I took before he started helping me.)


By the way, Nanette sent home some of her red velvet cake bites tonight, and they are not only beautiful and fancy, they are delicious!
* I just couldn't bring myself to call them "cake balls." I like how "cake bites" sounds better.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I disagree. Don't post recipes from books. (Daughter of a librarian speaking here.) I only post recipes that I've invented myself, or I link to the book.

If people care enough they can go buy the damn thing themselves. Plus, those two cookbooks you mentioned are WELL worth the money.
Anonymous said…
I told my coworkers about these earlier this week and they practically begged me to make them. Hopefully next weekend.

I post recipes and link to the cookbook. From what I hear, it's all about the attribution. But now Jenn is making me feel guilty.
Jami said…
OK, for now I have just linked to the cookbooks. :-)
Anonymous said…
Well if you link to the cookbook and post the recipe, I guess that's the same. Don't listen to me, I know nothing!
Nanette said…
I've been calling them "cake bites," too. "Cake balls" sounds dirty. ;)