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:)

Catch Up!

So it has officially been a month since my last post....oops.  In my defense we were out of town for two weeks for the holidays and to Florida for NC State's bowl game.  So now I am playing catch up.  Here is what we have been up to....

 Christmas....first with my family.  We have started some new traditions in my family since my dad remarried and since I got married several years ago.  One of my favorites is having my little brothers all come to my house for a night and make cookies, watch Christmas Vacation and play games!

Then we spent a few days at my parents house.  We went fishing, played the new Monopoly (Credit Card edition), watched movies, baked lots of yummy food and spent time with baby Grayson....yes another boy...I am so outnumbered in my family, but I loved every minute of us all being together:)

 On Christmas Eve my dad made me Gluten Free Pancakes....yummy!  After cleaning up from breakfast we picked a spot in the living room and got ready to open presents.  In my family we go around and open one gift from oldest to youngest.  After the youngest is done with his first present and we have all seen each other open one gift....its an "every man for himself, crazy frenzy" of opening presents....but we wouldn't have it any other way:)

After lunch we went straight to Charlotte for Ryan's family's Christmas Celebration.  We enjoyed visiting their new church for the Christmas Eve service.  On our way home from church we stopped by this one house in Charlotte where every inch of the property is covered in lights and the owner is dressed as Santa handing out candy to passing cars....to funny!

Christmas morning my father-in-law Paul made Sausage Gravy and Biscuits (gluten free for me)!  It has been two years since I have had his famous SG and B and was so excited when he told me he had been experimenting and figured out how to make it safe for me to eat!   We also had gluten free cinnamon rolls and lots of other delicious food...I wouldn't expect anything else at the Londry house though:)

So after the craziness of the gift opening with my family where it happens and is over in 30 minutes, I have to say Ryan's family is the exact opposite.  They open presents on Christmas day....all day.  It is a nice change, but I am glad Ryan and I get to experience both!  So the Londrys open gifts one at a time and take several breaks during the day.  I think we opened the last gift around 2 PM:)  We spent the rest of the day in the kitchen....just us girls preparing the Christmas dinner!

Christmas night and the day after Christmas several inches of snow fell and we had fun walking the dogs and seeing the fresh snow stacked on every inch of the outdoors....nothing like a white Christmas.

A few days after Christmas we headed down to Orlando, FL with Blake and Lindsay for The Champs Bowl to see NC State play!  We had a great time tailgating, seeing old friends...but it was sooo cold.  Who knew when we left snow covered North Carolina and headed 8 hours South that it would be colder???  Thank goodness the Wolfpack won and it was worth it!

Final Score: 23-7

A few days later we finally made it home and decided to stay in for a low key New Years:)  We are very excited about this year and know that we have a lot of changes to look forward to in the next few months:)  Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years, and are settling back into your normal routines....phewww I think I am finally caught up now:)