Cake Balls!

A while ago at work I was looking through a cart of books waiting to be reshelved and saw this little book all about making cake balls.  Looked simple enough, so I figured I'd give it a try!  And you know what, it was simple!  This recipe is for amaretto cake balls.  You will need: 1 box of yellow cake mix (and whatever ingredients are listed on the cake mix box); 3/4 C amaretto; 3.4-oz. pkg instant vanilla pudding; 1/2 tsp almond extract; 1/2 C chopped almonds; 2 C confectioners' sugar; 2 Tbsp softened butter; 2 Tbsp milk; 1/2 tsp vanilla; 24-oz bag of milk chocolate chips; 2 Tbsp shortening.

First up, we make the cake.  Follow the directions on the back of the box, except reduce the water by 1/2 C and add the amaretto.  Stir in the package of pudding mix and the almond extract and bake your cake by the instructions on the box.

What a pretty cake!

While the cake is cooling, make frosting by mixing together the confectioners' sugar, butter, milk, and vanilla.  When the cake is cooled down to room temperature, the fun part begins.  You need to crumble up your nice, pretty cake into a large bowl.  Try not to leave any big chunks.  I find that the corner pieces don't crumble very well, so you might just have to eat those parts.  Mix in your chopped almonds in with the cake crumbs.

Now, mix in the frosting until it's all nice and doughy and moist.

It's time to start rolling little cake balls!  Get out a large cookie sheet and cover it with waxed paper.  Pull off little bits of dough and roll them in your hands to get little balls about an 1"-1 1/2" in diameter.  You'll end up with a lot of them.

Put them in the freezer for about 2 hours or so.  When you're ready to dip them in chocolate, melt your bag of milk chocolate chips and 2 tablespoons of shortening together in a double boiler.  When the chocolate is melted, take the cake balls out of the freezer and dip them one at a time into the chocolate, using a fork or a toothpick (exact same way that the Oreo truffles and the buttercreams were done).  Put the dipped cake balls onto some more waxed paper and refrigerate until you're ready to eat them!  And of course I forgot to take a picture of them finished, but you can probably guess what little balls dipped in chocolate look like. 

This ended up being very easy to make, though rather time-consuming.  There are pretty much endless possibilities with these, using all kinds of varieties of cake and frosting flavors.  Just have fun and experiment!