Making Red Velvet Cake Balls

A few months ago, I attended a gathering where they served cake balls. After tasting a few different types of the balls, I came home and worked on duplicating the recipe here at home.

I tend to go for the easy recipes, so I began with a boxed mix of Red Velvet Cake Mix. We look for cake mixes on sales and stock up when the stores have sales. You literally follow the baking instructions on the box. I used a square Pyrex casserole dish to make the cake. Make sure the cake is cooked through. For me, this required the maximum suggested cooking time. Once cooked, allow the cake to cool completely. I allowed it to cool for about an hour.

Now comes the fun part. If you have kids, they'll love this part. Take this cooked cake and crumble it into a large mixing bowl. You want the entire cake completely crumbled. The red on your hands will wash out.

Now, take one can of ready made cream cheese frosting and mix with the crumbled cake. Again, we buy the frostings when they are on sale at the store. If you prefer, you can make your own cream cheese frosting from scratch. I used a spoon to mix it all together. Some of the recipes I've seen suggest using your hands. Since I am often serving food, I prefer to not use my hands and instead use utensils and elbow grease.

Get a baking sheet and line it with waxed paper. It's now time to make your balls. One box of cake mix mixed with the one can of frosting should make about forty or forty five balls. I used two cookie sheets for the balls.

Once you've made the balls, pop the cookie sheets into the refrigerator so that the cake balls chill. I left them in about two hours.

Prior to removing the cake balls from the refrigerator, it's time to get your dipping chocolate ready. My choice is always milk chocolate. I've seen these red velvet balls done with white chocolate also. My daughter prefers a dark chocolate. We use whatever we have in the house. Sometimes it's baking chocolate, sometimes it's baking chips.

When I melt chocolate, I mix the chocolate with oil. If you have a stick of Crisco, that works great. Otherwise, I've used plain old vegetable oil. The oil makes the chocolate a bit thinner, making it easier to coat the cake balls.

I work with a small amount of chocolate at a time, since the chocolate re-hardens. Take the cake balls one by one and dip them in the chocolate, coating completely. Place the cake balls back on the wax paper lined cookie sheet and put back into the refrigerator to chill.

Repeat until all cake balls are covered in chocolate. Remove from the refrigerator just before serving.

These are very sweet, but there is no way anyone can eat just one.