Friday, June 3, 2011

Chocolate cake balls and a belated blogiversary



For those looking for my FFwD "warm weather" vegetable pot au feu, it will be coming, but not until tomorrow.  Life has just been a little crazy for the past few weeks, so my blogging and visiting has been slightly more erratic because of lack of time.   I will return to regular programming as soon as things calm down (likely to be after the end of the financial year!).

In the meantime, my poor old blog's fourth blogiversary went by on 26 May unnoticed and unremarked - a travesty!  This blog has brought a richness to my life in many ways, so it deserves better.  Happy 4th birthday, Laws of the Kitchen!

On 26 May, it was also The Biggest Morning Tea in Australia, an event to raise money for cancer research.  This cause has become very real to me since my Mum and our dog have both suffered from the disease, so I chipped in to my work's Biggest Morning Tea with three different kinds of cake.  As the date was appropriate, I will also adopt one of these cakes for my blogiversary celebration.

One of the types of cake I meant to bring in were Elinor Klivans Chocolate Covered Hi-Hats. My friends Steve and Craig had brought me back a deck of Elinor's cupcake cards as a gift from New York, and all of my cakes for The Biggest Morning Tea were from that deck. The hi-hats looked suitably spectacular, so they made the cut.  Unfortunately, I didn't realise that the hi-hats were made in Texas muffin pans.  This meant that when I stuffed all of the mixture into poor wee regular muffin tins, I ended up with erupting cake batter all over my oven, and cupcakes with weird overflowing tops that stuck to the top of the tin.

Faced with the dilemma of what to do with these ugly looking cupcakes, I took a bite of one of them - and fell in love.  The chocolate cake was moist and delectable and definitely was worthy of being eaten - the problem is, in the looks department, those cakes weren't up to scratch.  After some soul searching, I decided to make cake balls from them.  This decision was not taken lightly, as I have previously made red velvet cake balls and was less than impressed - it seemed a waste of good cake to me.  However, in this case, the cakes could not stand alone, so I had nothing to lose, and made them into  chocolate cake balls.

I used The Crabapple Bakery's Chocolate Fudge Frosting to glue the cake crumbs from the abandoned hi-hats into balls.  The frosting recipe has been posted here.  After freezing the balls for an hour or so, I dipped them in melted dark chocolate, and after the coating had set, I piped on squiggles in white chocolate for decoration.  And lo - out of the ashes, a phoenix emerged that was the hit of my cakes with the punters - and also a hit with me.  These chocolate cake balls were rich, moist, deeply chocolatey and decadent.    If you added a splash of brandy to the cake mix, you'd have a treat fit for after a dinner party.  Elinor's cake plus Jennifer Graham's chocolate fudge frosting were a match made in heaven - and I didn't miss those hi-hats after all.

Happy Friday folks!

17 comments:

  1. These look fantastic Cakelaw!! gloria

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  2. Happy Bloganniversary! 4 years is a great time to be blogging; well done!! Your cake balls looks really yummy too

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  3. Mmm. These look wonderful - like truffles with a twist!

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  4. Oh, and Happy Blogiversary, of course!

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  5. Happy Blogoversary CakeLaw!

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  6. happy four year blogiversary - despite your protestations I admire your stamina in keeping up with blog events, your TWD and FFwD groups and remembering anniversaries - and I still want to work at your workplace and sample all your goodies!

    these cake balls look excellent - I have some leftover cake in the freezer that I keep meaning to transform likewise - I think I would prefer them to high hats in fact after looking up the recipe

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  7. Thanks to all on your well wishes! Much appreciated.

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  8. Happy 4th Blogaversary! These treats look delicious!

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  9. Happy Blogsoversary Cakelaw and may there be many more! I hope you're having fun in your busy state :D

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  10. Congrats on your blogiversary! Mine turned 4 on May 13th and I didn't even give it a thought until I read this post. Oh, well!

    My mom bought a cake pops "cookbook" that recommended using cake mix. The horrors! I think that cake balls should be used to cleverly transform a disaster into a success! Otherwise, like you said, it's a waste of a good cake! I had some chocolate cake that had stuck to the pan that I was going to use for cake balls, but I kept pulling it out of the freezer and eating bits of it, so now there's none left!

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  11. Wow, four years! Happy Blogiversary! The cake balls look really great - and a perfect way to save tasty but unattractive cake. I really like the idea of adding brandy to the cake balls for an after-dinner treat.

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  12. Happy blog anniversary Gaye. Wish you many more to come with lots of delicious creations like this one.

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  13. Covering anything with chocolate fudge icing will make it instantly appealing - to me, at least. And these look great - happy anniversary!

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  14. Happy Blogiversary!!!!!

    And what a wonderful way to raise awareness/funds for cancer research-I love how you saved the hi-hats and made them into cake balls! What a clever idea!!!!

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  15. Happy blogiversary - a magnificent achievement!

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  16. My father died of cancer a year and a half ago, so I want to wish you well with your fundraiser. What a beautiful (and I assume delicious)contribution you are making!

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Thanks for dropping by!