I'm Getting Fancier...

I made a batch of red velvet cake balls for hubby's bosses at work and with this batch I wanted to play around with a little decorating.  Nothing totally fancy but just with some candy drizzling. 

I first tried doing the drizzling with a melting squeeze bottle but I think I got a little impatient with the candy melting that I clogged the tip.  Since I didn't have a small enough cake decorator tip I sort of went the poor man's route and used a Ziploc bag.  I just filled it up with chocolate, sealed it up, and snipped a tiny whole in the corner of the bag.  Heh, it worked for the purpose and the cake balls turned out alright.  I just need to make a mental note to find a new decorator tip for this kind of decorating purposes.

Guess their looks didn't matter since I was told they tasted so good anyway ^_^.  Here's how they looked.

Special Order

Colored Balls...

So with this whole phenom of Bakerella's Cake Balls I jumped on the wagon in making these now. 

The thing I didn't mention in my previous post when I first made them is that I found a WAY cheaper way to get candy melts.  Rather than using pre-packaged Wilton brand candy melts that you can find already colored, I actually found chocolate and vanilla candy melts in the bulk foods section of my local grocery store at Winco.  The Wilton candy melts come in bags of 14 oz. at around $2.99 regular price.  Whereas, in the bulk bins I got my candy melts for $2.38/lb! Even though I would have to use oil based dye to color the white melts it still cheaper than buying the melts pre-packaged and I can deal with the coloring part. 

If you have a bulk foods section in your local grocery store go and look if you can find the candy melts.  I've been shopping at the grocery store for the past 10 years and have only really discovered it in the recent months.  I don't know why I never thought of buying most of my grocery items in that section, it would have helped me save some money in the past.

With that said this past Easter I made some Devil's Food cake balls just to play around with flavor.  With this batch I ended up using vanilla flavored candy melts and used oil based dye to color them baby blue and lavender. 


I had to play around with the dyes a bit to get the color I wanted.  I first started out with the blue coloring and used a toothpick dipped into the dye and let it drip into the melted chocolate.  After a few tries I got the color I desired.  With this batch of cake balls I think I made about 80, so I colored half of it blue and the other half lavendar.  When the first batch was done I still had some blue coating left, so I just added more candy melts and added red dye till I reached the lavendar shade I wanted.

After this batch was done and taste test commenced.  I got a thumbs up from my Lil Booger and friends!  Although they still preferred the red velvet cake instead LOL.  It was good experimentation for me and try to get the cake balls coated nicer. 

Here's how they turned out and a few pics of my supplies.

Vanilla Candy Melts



Oil Based Candy Colors

Vanilla Melts Colored Lavender

Light Blue Colored Cake Balls



Lavender Colored Cake Balls



Trifle, Sex in a Pan, Orgasm Cake...

However you want to call it.  I've only known this dessert to be called Trifle when I first learned how to make this over 15 years ago in high school.  It's so indulgently yummy and chocolaty I can see why it can be called "Sex in a Pan" or an "Orgasm Cake" since it's better than sex or so I've been told LOL.

It's really easy to make and I usually layer this dessert neatly into a glass trifle dish bowl.  However, since I made this last night to take over to a BBQ I just used a plain ol' aluminum pan and made one layer of each ingredient.

Here's the how to:

CHOCOLATE TRIFLE
Ingredients:
1 box of devil's food cake mix
1 box of chocolate instant pudding (I used the bigger one, not sure what the size is exactly)
1 big tub of Cool Whip
4 Skor candy bars

Directions:
Bake cake according to box directions.  Prepare pudding according to package directions.  Let Cool Whip thaw out while cake is baking.  Chop up Skor candy bar into small pieces.  Once the cake is done baking and cooled down, crumble into a layer in a trifle bowl.  Layer with half of chocolate pudding, half of Cool Whip, and candy.  Repeat layer one more time with remaining ingredients.

This is how it would look like in a trifle bowl and one layered in an aluminum pan.