Extra cake, frosting, and some chocolate – why not make some cake balls?  Last week, I made a multi-layer birthday cake.  Each layer, must be leveled (slicing off the top of each cake so that top and bottom are perfectly parallel).  This is essential to making a cake look “professional.” While it is one extra step in the process, it’s one that my kids most appreciate – the extra cake that is.  Usually I just let my kids snack on the extra cake.  Because I had actually baked 6 layers of cake there was a LOT of extra cake.  In fact, there was so much cake that I took five of the “tops of cake” and made an entire extra layer cake.  Okay, it looked terrible, but my kids didn’t complain while eating it.  I still had an extra full layer of chocolate cake and a bit of chocolate frosting left over.  I threw the extra cake in the food processor and mixed it with the extra frosting.   I chilled the mixture and formed small balls.  After popping the balls in the freezer for a bit, I coated them in chocolate coating (I had a lot of chocolate left over from the cake, too).  I realize that the cake ball craze is pretty much over, but they still are a great treat. Unfortunately, they are very labor intensive, which makes them expensive to purchase and a pain to make.  This was an ideal time to make the cake balls.  I had all the ingredients on hand and I would hate to be wasteful.

Thus, one man’s trash is a dessert lover’s treasure.