Having a Ball!

I have now made several "take away" gifts for parties over the past year, but this one is my new favorite.  Some call them Cake Balls and some call them Cake Pops...whatever you call them, they are cute and yummy!  Although they are not hard to make, they are sort of time consuming.  While I was busy in the kitchen yesterday making these little treats, Ryan decided to try to make meatballs.  They turned out delicious and we got a kick out of the 6 cookie sheets of little balls in the kitchen yesterday between our two cooking projects:)
So here is the Cake Pop...

To make these you need:
-One box of cake mix (I used my favorite Betty Crocker Gluten Free White Cake Mix)
-3/4 cotainer of icing
-Melting chocolate (I found it at AC Moore, Hobby Lobby and Micheal's)
-Lollipop sticks
-Clear bags, ribbon, tags or wrapping of your choice
**One box of cake yields about 40 Cake Balls.

First just bake the cake according to directions on the box.  Let it cool completely and then crumble it into the smallest pieces possible into a big bowl.  I wasn't planning on blogging about this until this point in the process so I don't have great pics of this.

Then add 3/4 the container of icing to the crubled cake.  I found that using a wooden spoon is the easiest to mix with.  This is also where you can be creative.  Use the cake flavor and icing color/flavor to make it different.  You could do strawberry icing with red velvet cake for Valentines coming up:)
To make the dough easier to work with freeze the mixture at this point for about 30 minutes.  Then roll the dough into small balls.

Then melt your chocolate.  I do this in the microwave for 1 minute 15 sec and stir it every 20 seconds.

Dip the lollipop stick into the melted chocolate and stick it into the Cake Ball.  I refreeze the balls in between each step...you don't have to do this, but it makes it a whole lot easier to work with.

You will need something to stick the Cake Pops in while the chocolate cools and hardens.  I use a big piece of Styrofoam.  Now you are ready to dip the Cake into the chocolate.

Shake off the extra chocolate and place it  into the Styrofoam to cool.

I was making these for a baby shower so I made lables to match the invitation and wrapped each Cake Pop!

Again use the cake, icing, and chocolate flavors to mix it up.  In case you were wondering...

 Ryan's meatballs also turned out great!   He made so many, we had spaghetti last night and plan on having meatball subs this week for lunch:)  Plus being in the kitchen cooking together was a great way to spend our Saturday:)