Saturday, February 19, 2011

A New House and a Valentine's Recipe

I'm so sorry I haven't been blogging lately!! It has been a crazy week!!! As you can see, we finally got a house!! It's a rental, but it will do for now!! It is a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, with a 1 car garage and a backyard!! Anyone from anywhere else would think a backyard would be a given, but coming from Chicago life, a backyard is a definite plus!! And a huge reason we wanted to move down to Oklahoma. Maddy will have her own backyard to run around in!!
We have moved some of our stuff in, and will continue to move the rest of our stuff in this week and get settled in!! I will post pictures as soon as I can!!
On a different note, I meant to post my Valentine's gift for Tad!! The other reason I haven't been blogging is because our camera screen broke, making it difficult to take pictures and impossible to view them. To be continued. Hopefully we can get a new camera sometime. So sorry I fell out of the blogging world for a whole week!!
So, back to Valentine's Day. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of bakerella.com. One of her main recipes is for cake balls, which are pretty much little balls of cake covered in chocolate. And let me tell you, they are to die for!!
This is what I originally wanted to make for Tad for V-day. But then I realized that I have never worked with fondant by myself, I'm not a cake-maker, and figured that experimenting with cake balls first would be enough of a new thing to try. They were delicious!!
The recipe is so easy!!!

Red Velvet Cake Balls
bakerella.com

1 box red velvet cake mix (cook as directed on box for 13 by 9 cake)
1 can cream cheese frosting (16 0z)
1 package chocolate bark (regular or white chocolate)
wax paper

1. After the cake is cooked and cooled completely, crumble it into a large bowl.
2. Mix thoroughly with 1 can cream cheese frosting. (Use fingers or a sturdy spoon)
3. Roll mixture into quarter size balls and lay on cookie sheet. (It should make 45 to 50. You can use your hands to roll them, or a mini-sized ice cream scooper.)
4. Chill for several hours. (You can put them in the freezer to make this go faster.)
5. Melt the chocolate according to the package directions in the microwave. (Melting a few pieces at a time will help the chocolate not to become too firm to work with.)
6. Roll balls in chocolate and lay on wax paper until firm. (You can use a spoon to dip them in chocolate and then tap off the extra.)

Make these for your sweetie sometime and score some extra points!!! They are really good and really decadent!! They are easy, have few ingredients, and look impressive!! They do take some time since you have to make the cake, wait for it to cool, form the balls, let them cool for several hours, and then dip them in chocolate. So make sure you plan for 1/2 to a whole day to make them. I also cut up walnuts, and used red sprinkles and black icing to make some creative toppings. You can do other things to jazz these up too. Just check out her website for more creative ideas with cake balls!!
I was so glad to make these for my sweetie for Valentine's Day!! They were a nice treat when he came home from work late on Monday night!! Love you, Tad!! Thanks for the special Valentine's Day!!

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