Kyle – Page 9 – Andelin Adventures

900 Cake Balls

From her post over Easter weekend, Rebecca explained,

“I have been too busy to blog lately. And the main reason is that I have been making cake balls, for Debby’s wedding. I am glad to report that I have survived, and it’s all finally over! 😉

“Cake balls are something that I had never heard before. My dad sent me a text awhile back asking me to try making some, because he needed ‘a reliable cook’ to try them out. Uh ok! So after looking up some instructions on the internet I got busy. I started with 4 flavors, chocolate, strawberry, lemon and rainbow chip.

“Then I passed them all out after giving Debby a bunch to try.”

I decided to hijack this post and make it my own. -evil laugh number 14-

Cake balls are pretty simple in concept, but VERY time consuming. As the name implies, they start out as a cake. The beautiful thing about making these little morsels of wonderfulness is, you can use ugly cake to make them. The cake is then mixed with frosting until thoroughly mixed, then they are shaped and dipped in chocolate. As the pictures below show, white, milk, or dark chocolate all work for these.

She expanded her original four varieties into a total of 11 (yes, eleven!) different flavours!

Rainbow Chip.

In our taste tests, this one was referred to as “cupcake flavour” by children. And we don’t blame them! It was white chocolate coated Rainbow chip cake blended with rainbow chip frosting. the finishing touch was confetti chocolate drizzles. It certainly has a party appearance to it, although the taste is still sophisticated enough for adults.

Quadruple Chocolate.

This cake ball was chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, coated in milk chocolate, with dark chocolate drizzled on top. I really wasn’t sure what to call this (these names ARE working titles only, of course), but the thought of how much chocolate goes into this is rather overwhelming. Now, if only I could figure out a way to get chocolate chips and chocolate drizzles into these, and they’ll be a true “death by chocolate” experience!

Red Velvet

The “Southern tradition” of Red Velvet, from what I’ve read, is really classic and popular in the south. My first experience with it was at the buffet restaurant, Golden Corral. A deep red cake with a hint of chocolate flavour, blended with a mild cream cheese frosting, coated in white chocolate, with drizzles of red. This was one of the most popular flavours in our family and trials.

Ultimate Carrot.

What better name for it? This was a moist carrot cake, merged with crushed pineapple, raisins, coconut and chopped pecans. Adding cream cheese frosting for the perfect taste, and then dipped in white chocolate, drizzled in orange stripes. Not to be confused with Orange or Pumpkin (coming soon!)

Almost Fresh Strawberry

Rebecca insists that to be called “Fresh,” it needs to have fresh strawberries added, but that wouldn’t keep very well. A rich strawberry cake blended with strawberry frosting is almost overwhelming for haters of the berry, but if you enjoy strawberries, it’s quite the experience. Once dipped in dark chocolate and drizzled with pink, you won’t even miss the fresh fruit.

Vanilla Chocolate Chip

Aren’t they cute? This was actually a basic vanilla flavour, but we found adding chocolate to anything can really make it better. French vanilla cake and frosting, with mini chocolate chips, dipped in milk chocolate and decorated (by hand, of course!) with little dots. Quite the contrast to the rainbow chips in the aforementioned cupcake flavour up above.

Lemon

Lush, lush lemon. This was one of the four original flavours Rebecca made in her trials, and found the white chocolate coating really helped the tangy lemon flavour come out, while the initial tests of milk chocolate masked the taste. Simply lemon cake, mixed with lemon frosting, with yellow stripes on the white chocolate coating.

Pina Colada

I know, I know, it’s just Pineapple Coconut, but there’s something special about using the Spanish name for it. This was my personal favourite to design and decorate. A pineapple cake with extra pineapple mixed in for texture, plus flakes of coconut, dipped in white chocolate, then dipped in toasted coconut. Aren’t they just divine?

Butter Pecan

Okay, I’ll admit it. Discussing this flavour didn’t excite me. I always have high expectations for Butter Pecan ice cream, yet am always disappointed, so when we looked at Butter Pecan cake, I wasn’t thrilled at first. But when cream cheese frosting and chopped pecans were added to it, the result was so sweet and tasty! This was dipped in milk chocolate and drizzled with milk chocolate stripes (although I’m sure I can convince Rebecca to roll these in chopped pecans next time.)

Chocolate Rum

Wow. Simply wow. When I was on my mission in England, some bakeries carried items called “Rum balls” which were just large moist balls of some kind of cake, rolled in sprinkles. I don’t think there was real rum in them (never asked), but the flavour was something else. These are very close; chocolate cake mixed with chocolate frosting and rum flavoring, give quite an overwhelming rum taste (you either like it or don’t!), dipped in dark chocolate and topped with chocolate sprinkles. Not to be confused with a See’s Candy Bordeaux, since they are so much better!

German Chocolate

After making the Pina Colada flavours, we thought it would be pretty to decorate these in a reverse colour scheme. German Chocolate cake was blended with coconut pecan frosting, giving a subtle coconut flavour on the inside, then dipped in milk chocolate and topped with flaked white coconut. Similar to the regular chocolate in flavour, but you can certainly taste the coconut inside and out.

Bathroom Update

Just a quickie. We got the toilet fixed from Dinah’s mischief, by calling a plumber who came out, pulled the toilet off, pushed the piece out through the back, and put everything back together.

Maybe I’m in the wrong profession. For him to do this, including the “gas fee,” was $105, for less than 45 minutes of work. But I know if I were to try and do it myself, it’d be the better part of a day, and I don’t have the tools nor do I have the experience to pull the toilet off without flooding the floor with used water.. I’d say that was money well spent.

I still need to get the shower working properly. We’ll try it on Saturday, and hopefully I can take the piece to a plumbing supply store to get it replaced, if I can’t figure out why it can’t serve both temperatures at the same time.

Rainbow Pancakes

Personally, I wanted to call this post “It All Started With Chicken Crap” but for some reason, my wife didn’t like my idea. She’s not as creative as I, obviously.

I was at work, and I got a random link to the website chickencrap.com. First time I had heard of the site, so I browsed around a bit and found this page. It seemed really cool, like someone had dipped pancakes into some colourful syrups and stacked them, so I sent Rebecca the link. She must’ve liked it, because with a quick google search, and with the first link she clicked, found the original site the image came from, and linked it back to me.

She had actually used food colouring to make the batter different colours, and had included the recipe on her site! Rebecca got excited and decided to test it out for the next morning. Since we have little kids, we decided on small (silver dollar size) pancakes, which made cute little stacks around 2 inches in diameter, and two inches tall.

Considering the kids are normally so finicky about their pancakes (they normally eat one or two, sometimes three if the syrups are good), for us to see two to three STACKS of pancakes consumed by some of the kids was absolutely stunning! The pancakes didn’t even have any special flavours; they were just plain pancakes with standard syrup on them. Fortunately the batter made enough stacks that we were able to save around 10 of them for the next day, which were promptly devoured.

Two thumbs up for the great idea!

Bathroom Woes

Upstairs in our house, we have two bathrooms; one in the master bedroom, and another in the hallway that everyone else can use. For a few years, the bathtub has only given hot water, which confused us since when Nana lived with us, she used to take proper showers in that bathroom. (this does go back to 2006). We haven’t used that bathtub much, since the kids bathe in our master bath.

Every once in a while, I get the motivation to complete the little projects around the house that require my attention, like fixing the latch on the pantry door so it can properly close, or fixing the seat on one of the dining table chairs. Anyway, on Saturday I decided I had enough of the hot water issue, and figured I would pull it apart and see if I can figure out what the problem was, so when Rebecca’s family comes up next time, they will have another fully functional bathroom to use. With Ethan by my side, I pulled out the screwdriver and carefully pulled off the handle to turn on the tub, then pulled off the piece that attached to the wall, keeping track of how I removed it so I could put it back together. Behind it was a black doohicky, with the golden screw sticking out where the handle attached.

I removed the screws holding this piece in place and, trying to figure out how this piece attached, I pulled on it and suddenly it popped out of the wall, gushing water all over me and the bathtub from the hot and cold spouts inside the wall! It instantly soaked me and sprayed all over the bathtub wall, but due to a lack of control was spraying the bathroom wall as well. I quickly grabbed a bucket and used it to control where the water was spraying, and called Rebecca who came in to laugh at me (very supportive, she is) and offered to turn off the water (yes, please!) She ran down stairs and found the main water valve and turned it off, which instantly caused the water to stop gushing.

I then took stock of the situation. All the other parts, which I had been trying to inventory as I disassembled them, were floating in the water that now filled the tub. I spent the next few minutes trying to figure out how I thought the pieces should go back together (there were two large black pieces with two holes each, for hot and cold water; a large rubber ring; and two small springs and small black rubber caps, presumably to cap off the water the other pieces allowed in.) I put it together as best as I thought should be, quickly put it back into the wall and had Ethan hold it in place so the springs wouldn’t push the pieces out, then reassembled the fixture completely, having Rebecca go downstairs to turn on the water.

I thought it worked, but when I tested it, it started leaking water heavily, so I told her to turn it off again and pulled it apart. I thought the springs weren’t sitting correctly, so I put them back in, sent Rebecca downstairs for another test, and found the same problem. At least this time I decided not to completely repair the fixture.

Two more tries of this until I decided to reassemble, the piece that got blown out, differently, and found it snapped together where I thought the rubber ring was, and the ring sat over that area. This time I was able to assemble everything, and now our bathroom has cold water!

…Just not hot. I guess the piece has a defective something that is causing only one side of water to flow, and I succeeded in reversing that piece in the wall.

On a side note, Dinah was playing in the bathroom later the next day, at the toilet. We’re so glad she wants to be potty trained, but she still is very curious about everything. This time, she had pulled the white spring-loaded stick off the toilet paper holder, and was holding an almost empty roll of paper, staring down the freshly flushed toilet. This is where I walked in.

“Dinah, did you just flush the toilet,” I asked.

“Uh huh,” she announced proudly.

“Dinah,” I said, looking around, “where is the stick that holds the toilet paper?”

“It bye-bye,” she declared.

“Umm,” I started, staring into the toilet to see if there really was an indication of what happened. I only got met with a vacant stare of settling water as the flush ended. “Dinah, you flushed it down the toilet?”

“Uh huh,” she grinned, “it bye-bye.”

“Rebecca?” I called to her and she came rushing down the hall. Turning back to Dinah, I asked again, “Dinah, where is the stick for the toilet paper?”

She looked at Rebecca and me, still very confident in her decision. “It bye-bye,” she said with a nod.

I looked all over the bathroom and couldn’t find it. I went downstairs to look at the pipe to see if I had any other option, but it was a large pipe with a direct connection to the main sewer outlet. I didn’t think the toilet could handle something so stiff on its curves, but we still haven’t found it.

Now the toilet seems to be suffering from indigestion, and doesn’t want to swallow anything we flush.

Stargazing

Last night was the final day to catch some of the meteor shower from the annual Perseid shower. I heard about it on the radio and went out the night before to watch for it, but I didn’t know what to look for. So I decided to make more of a date of it with Rebecca, and after the kids went to bed, I grabbed some blankets and went out to our back yard, and we simply laid down on the blanket in our dark yard, and watched up in the sky. The weather was really nice for it; there was a slight breeze, but it was relatively warm for 11:00 at night. Only a few of our neighbours left their porch lights on, so it was pretty dark.

When we first watched the sky, Rebecca pointed out the hazy area, which I explained was the Milky Way. I’m more used to staring at the stars than she is, since I go out at nights and walk Chewy. Then we looked around at the stars and realised that we didn’t know enough about the constellations to really appreciate those thousand points of sparkling light. We saw our first shooting star (how exciting) and watched the stars, taking advantage of a chance to talk a bit as well.

Rebecca saw 17 different meteors, of which I saw around 12 of them (what can I say, between star-gazing and Rebecca-gazing, I wasn’t always looking up) but I saw two that she didn’t see, so all within around 40 minutes, we saw 19 of them. It was really fun!