Argos' How To... Make Cake Balls

Gather Your Ingredients

There's basically three things you need to bake cake balls:

1. Cake
2. Frosting
3. Coating

You can make your cake and frosting from scratch or you can use a pre-packaged cake mix and frosting. As far as the coating goes, you can use any sweetened, meltable chocolate. For my first cake ball project, I used chocolate bark coating which Kroger carries for $3.79 for 24 oz. (12 bars in the package are 2 oz. each) I would imagine just about any other grocery store would have something like it. I found it in the baking aisle hiding out next to the chocolate chips.

You'll need one package of bark coating for each batch of cake balls you want to make. I found for the 30 cake balls I made there was just enough. My first attempt was pretty messy and I probably wasted some chocolate coating but it all worked out OK. (Update: Now that I have some experience under my belt I've found that I normally have about two bars left of the bark coating. I usually end up using the last two bars for decorative drizzle or save them for another project.)

Instead of the bark coating you can also use those little confectionary wafers. The nice thing about those is that they come in all sorts of different colors. I've seen these at Michael's in the cake decorating aisle. If you chose to add coloring to your bark coating or wafers be sure to use oil-based coloring or paste. Coloring that contains water will cause the coating to become crumbly and unworkable..

The Birth of a Cake Ball

Step One: Bake Your Cake This one is pretty easy. Just bake your cake the way you usually would. You can use just a rectagular sheet pan because you'll be destroying the cake anyway once its done baking. It's really fun! Let your cake cool for a while but it should still be slightly warm before you crumble it into the bowl. I think I let my cake cool for 15-20 minutes. Once your cake is crumbled by hand you can continue the process a step further by using a hand mixer or food processor to get a finer texture.

Step Two: Add Frosting Now, mix in your frosting to make a paste. You'll need to add 3/4 to a full can of frosting. It all depends on what type of cake and frosting you use. I started off with 3/4 of the can and the mixture still looked a little dry so I added to the rest of the container. If you want your cake balls to be more cakey you'll probably want to add less frosting. In the words of Martha Stewart your mixture is going to "feel weird." So if those are your thoughts--don't worry--you're on the right track! Before you roll out the balls you want the mixture to chill for a while. If you try to roll them out while warm or at room temperature they will crumble into bits. I put my mixture in the freezer for two hours only because I was busy and didn't have time to get back to it right away. However, according to the cake ball experts the mixture only needs to stay in the freezer for 15 minutes. I noticed after rolling out about half the mixture that it started to get warm again and hard to work with. So I put the rest back in the freezer for about 15-20 minutes and finished it up. I used my hands to roll out the balls but I've heard using a melon baller can make things easier. You can make the balls as small or as big as you like but 1 to 1.5 inches is recommended. I found some of the larger cake balls where a lot harder to dip in the coating and was wishing I had made some of them smaller. After rolling them out I placed the balls in a plastic container to keep in the freezer. You can stack them on top of each other between sheets of waxed paper.

Some websites recommend putting the rolled balls onto cookie sheets but I don't have that much room in my freezer!

You'll want to freeze the balls for at least 6 hours. This makes it much easier to dip the balls in melted chocolate. If the balls are too warm when you try to coat them with chocolate you'll have a big mess on your hands!

Step Three: Coat With Chocolate Once your balls are nice and chilled you're ready to dip them in chocolate. I used the microwave to melt my bark coating but you can also a saucepan or double boiler. Here's melting directions from the back of the bag: Double boiler: Heat water in bottom of double boiler to boiling. Remove from heat and add coating in top of double boiler. Stir until melted. Saucepan: Melt candy coating in heavy saucepan at very low temperatures, stirring constantly until smooth. Microwave: Place candy coating in microwave safe dish. Microwave for one minute at full power, then stir thoroughly. Continue microwaving on high for 15 seconds intervals, stirring well after each interval, until smooth. Helpful Hints: Chop or break up coating to speed melting times. Melt at lowest temperature possible to produce the smoothest final product. Overheating will cause bark coating to scorch. Use only dry utensils or cooking pans because moisture will causing coating to seperate, solidify or granulate.

Thank you to http://amandakjones.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-Cake-Balls for this great recipe!