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.  

This was my Valentine’s gift to my family – a pound cake in a pound cake.  The pink (vanilla) cake stayed remarkably moist after being baked inside the chocolate cake.  My kids really liked snacking on the extra leftover pink cake.  My daughter is a true chocolate lover and she doesn’t believe that chocolate cake actually is an acceptable form of chocolate.  She prefers ganache and fudge to chocolate cake.  However, she appreciated the fun look of the cake and enjoyed a few slices.  Less than 24 hours later, all the cake is gone (the pink scraps and the one with the heart inside).