Recipes – Andelin Adventures

Pumpkin Cake Balls

In theme with the holiday season, Rebecca decided to create a new flavour cake ball. This one was very moist, and theoretically lower in calories than the other kinds (as the cake was so moist, it didn’t need a full batch of frosting mixed in.) At least, this is what we will claim.

Pumpkin

A moist pumpkin cake, made from real pumpkin, and all the right spices mixed in. Blended with a buttery cream cheese frosting, then coated with delicate orange coloured, vanilla flavoured chocolate! And decorated to look just like little pumpkins! 🙂

Fire Cracker Cake Balls

I saw this idea online a few days ago, and said I can make prettier ones and I decided to improve upon the idea that I had seen. 😉

Introducing Fire Cracker Cake Balls! I couldn’t decide if I wanted to decorate them with sprinkles or with the chocolate drizzles so I did some of each. 🙂 And the insides are strawberry red cake, surrounded by blue plain cake (half of them I did the other way, blue surrounded by red), dipped in white chocolate and topped with red, white and blue sprinkles (or red and blue confetti drizzles).

Chocolate Cake

This is my most favorite homemade chocolate cake. I just eat it without frosting it’s so good!

2 cups boiling water
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 3- 9 inch round cake pans or I have used a bundt pan or one large 10 in x 15 in pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the boiling water with the cocoa, and whisk until smooth. Don’t be tempted to taste it. 😉 It looks and smells a lot better than it tastes at this point. Let this mixture cool, while you prepare the rest.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside for now.

In a large bowl, (I use my kitchenaid) cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.

Alternately add the flour mixture and the cocoa mixture. So I pour a bit of the cocoa mixture in, let it mix a bit then a bit of the flour mixture and let it mix a bit, and repeat until I’ve added all of the cocoa and flour mixtures.

Pour the batter into your prepared pan(s).

Bake in preheated oven.

3-9inch rounds for 25-30 minutes

10 in x 15 in pan for 50-60 minutes

I don’t remember how long the bundt pan took, but I tend to set the timer for the lower number and then just keep checking it until it’s done.

Allow the cake to cool in the pan before pulling it out. And then just dig in and eat it because it’s so GOOD! 😉

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.

Pineapple Jam

Yumm! This is my newest experiment in the canning department. We had a pineapple sitting on the table, just waiting for the ‘perfect’ time to cut into it, and well the ‘perfect’ time just never came, so the pineapple was starting to look a bit over-ripe. So I decided “Hey! Let’s look for a recipe to make some jam!” Well I found one and it worked, so I sent Kyle to wal mart to get a few more pineapples because they were $2 each at the time. 😀

3 1/4 cups crushed pineapple
3 cups granulated sugar
1 box Sure-jel powdered pectin
1 tsp butter or margarine

I crushed the pineapple using our food processor. It came out nice and chunky. I did do a batch with pineapple that I put through the blender, but it just pureed it, instead of crushing it.

Combine the crushed pineapple, pectin, and butter or margarine in a large pot. Bring to a rolling boil and add the sugar. Return to a full rolling boil and boil hard for 1 minute. Fill prepared jars leaving about 1/4 inch head space. Adjust two piece lids, and either invert for 5 minutes and set upright to cool and seal or, process for 15 minutes* in a boiling water canner or a steam canner.

*For our altitude here in Utah you need to add 10 minutes to the processing time.