Oreo Balls

I love things that are simple...especially things that are super simple.  And if they taste good too, well then that's a bonus.  So when I found the recipe for Oreo balls and realized just how ridiculously easy they were to make, I made sure to add a trip to the grocery store to pick up the necessary ingredients: Oreos and cream cheese.  See, easy!  But even more exciting, I think I finally figured out how to semi-professionally dip these suckers...of course it took until the very end.  But I think my next go round at truffles or cake balls should be just about perfect...or just about perfect as I'm going to get something.

Anyway, here's the recipe for Oreo Balls.  Seriously, you need to run out to the store now so you can make a batch of these.  Trust me, you won't be sorry!!!

Oreo Balls
Ingredients
- 1 package Oreos
- 1 block of cream cheese
- dipping chocolate of your choice

Directions
1.  Using a food processor, finely grind the entire package of Oreos.  (Don't have a food processor?  No   worries.  A Ziploc baggie and a rolling pin will do the trick.)
2.  Add the entire block of cream cheese to the Oreo crumbs and process until completely blended.
3.  Roll the mixture into bite-sized balls and chill for at least 30 minutes.
4.  Dip the chilled balls into your melted chocolate and lay on waxed paper. Feel free to garnish with drizzled chocolate or sprinkle with crushed Oreos.  Allow them to harden for at least 30 minutes.
5.  Store in a covered container in the refrigerator.

4th of July Cake Pops

First off, I just have to say that the person who invented the cake ball is just pure genius.  I love that I can use all my "leftovers" to whip up such an amazing dessert in such a perfect, bit-sized package.  For this attempt, I used scraps of my red, white and blue cake mixed with strawberry and vanilla icing leftover from Maddie's birthday.  They are dipped in white chocolate and sprinkled with Wilton's Patriotic Mix.

As a funny aside, I was having trouble locating a red, white and blue sprinkle mix.  I did find a red and white mixture from Wilton but what are patriotic cake balls without blue sprinkles?!  So I decided to improvise...I had a large container of mixed sprinkles and I spent the last 2 days (with a little help from the kids) sorting through it to get out all of the blue sprinkles.  This afternoon, before I assembled the cake balls, I made a quick trip to HEB to get some things I forgot on yesterday's trip, and of course this is when I found the container of patriotic sprinkles....go figure!

Anyway, I'm am slowly learning how to make the perfect cake ball, but I have to admit that dipping those darn things is a lot harder than it looks...at least if you are going for perfection.  I decided to go the cake pop route because I thought this would make them easier to dip.  My guess is it is, but I think I might have used a little too much icing, because the batter was a little on the moist side, the balls didn't firm up as much as I would have liked them to and they kept slipping off the sticks.  Still, I managed to only completely destroy four out of the entire bunch and ended up with half-way decent looking cake balls.  Maybe I just need to sign up for a cake ball class so someone can show me how simple it really is.

When Life Gives You Bad Cupcakes...

I'm not sure what I was thinking when I decided to make some cupcakes from scratch.  While I'm all for making my own cakes here at the house instead of buying them from a store, I do still surrender to using boxed cake mixes.  But I was in need of cupcakes to decorate and had no boxed-mix on hand, so I did an online search for a cake recipe that doesn't call for butter (because I didn't have that on hand either).  The recipe I came upon had a high rating and I actually had all of the ingredients here in the house, so I went for it.  That night after dinner, I gave each of the kids a cupcake as a treat.  They didn't go over very well.  The kids ate, at most, two bites and then walked away telling me they didn't like the muffins.  Hello!  They were cupcakes...how can you not like a cupcake.  And then I took a bite.  They were the densest, nastiest cupcakes I had ever tasted.  Great.  I had about 16 of them left.  So I decided to whip up a batch of butter cream frosting to put on them....try to mask the nastiness of the cupcakes.  Taste test 2 was a failure.  So now I had about 14 iced, nasty cupcakes left.  They sat there for about 2 days, cluttering the counter.  Finally, my husband asked me what I was going to do with them.  I was having trouble just throwing them away because it was good food going to waste.  His comment: "Too bad you can't reconstitute cupcakes."  And that's when it hit me...you can.....you can make cakeballs!  The next day Lizzie and hit the store for some canned chocolate frosting.  We mixed it together with the nasty, iced cupcakes and dipped them in white chocolate...and behold, the goodness of cake balls came into our house.

Our first attempt at them was not very attractive, but they tasted fantastic.  You wouldn't have had a clue that they were made with nasty "muffin" cupcakes if I hadn't told you.

Teacher Appreciation Week allowed for attempt 2 and these turned out much nicer.  We went with a vanilla cake/strawberry icing combo covered with chocolate.  They tasted just like chocolate covered strawberries!

Attempt 3 is waiting patiently in the freezer for a reason to make them...well that and I need to buy a set of dipping tools to see if this will help in making the coating look a little more uniform.