Saturday, October 24, 2009

Krazy Cake (Balls)

Thanks to my sister, the incredible internet information finder, I am now crazy about making cake balls. She sent me the link to an article about them. Did you know people write articles about cake? In that article was a link to a baking site called Bakerella. Go there and be amazed. No matter how hard I try, my baking will never look that pretty.

So I began to make cake balls. First, I made a strawberry cake mix and added cream cheese frosting. Those were okay. But I realized I am kind of a cake snob. I don’t like cake from a box. I tried using two family famous recipes and came up with my own version.

I started by making a Kraze Cake. This recipe is from my Grandma, my own personal Betty Crocker. It’s “Krazy” because it doesn’t have any eggs.

Krazy Cake ( Do not grease pan)

3 cups of flour

2 cups of sugar

1/3 cup of cocoa

2 tsp. soda

1 tsp. salt

3/4 cup salad oil

2 tablespoons vinegar

2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups of water

Sift all dry ingredients together. Make 3 wells in the flour mixture and put vinegar in one, salad oil in another, and vanilla in the last hole. It looks a little like a creepy mask.

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Pour water over all and mix with a fork or wooden spoon. Do not beat, but be sure it’s well mixed. Bake in a 9x13 pan at 350 for 30 – 35 minutes.

Let the cake cool and break it up.

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Add my mother-in-laws peanut butter frosting recipe. This is doubled because I didn’t think it made as much as a can of frosting.

4 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons vanilla

6 tablespoons peanut butter

4 cups powdered sugar

Beat ingredients and add one tablespoon of milk at a time until you get the consistency you want. I think I added 6.

(By the way, for vanilla frosting, omit peanut butter. For chocolate frosting, add 6 Tablespoons of cocoa.)

Add the frosting into the broken up cake. This part is fun to help with.

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Mix it up with your hands.

Roll into balls.

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Freeze for a while. Then dip in almond bark.

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It makes a lot of cake balls. A lot. And if your husband doesn’t like them because they are too chocolatey, start packing them up in the little tins you bought at the dollar spot that you didn’t know what to do with. Tie some Raffia on them and give them away while pretending to be Martha Stewart.

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Some of Abby’s friends tried them at school and asked if we could have them at cheerleading. Since I’m already caving to all 2nd grade girl demands I figured I could grant this request too.

They are pretty fun to make and it doesn’t actually take that long but it will mess up your entire kitchen. It is not as big of a mess as when your crockpot full of soup overturns in your trunk on the way home from a potluck. Now that’s messy.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow those look great and thanks for sharing!

Grammy said...

and the recipe for almond bark??? these look good and I can get all the ingredients here in Ecuador!

Bonny said...

I've probably never told you my cake ball story!

B had recently seen the old episode of SNL with Alec Baldwin - the Shweddy Balls / Delicious Dish skit. She laughed til she cried. She was then invited to a very girly-girl youth group event (which ... she hates. Despises. The guys are out doing all the fun activities where the girls sit around and eat and braid each other's hair. That kind of thing). So, she said she was going to make some cake balls and bring them, if only to amuse herself throughout the evening.

Megan M. said...

I CANNOT wait to make these! We always make "Christmas Crunch" for the holidays, which is just almond bark on a mixture of Chex cereals, peanuts, chocolate chips or M&M's and pretzel sticks. These will be a fantastic addition to that!

Mommy Missionary said...

I used store bought almond bark in a bag, but you probably could find a recipe for that or another candy coating on the internet.

I'm a cake snob, but not an almond bark snob!

And I did see that SNL skit! I used to be a big fan of that show and now I'm too old to stay up that late!

Molly Broderick said...

Yum! Even better, cuz I'm allergic to eggs! Way to go Michelle. I'll make some for us and some for Christmas gifts!