Pink Cake Balls

A while back, I saw a post about these easy and pretty confections and knew I wanted to try them for Valentine's Day.  Like so many new and fun baking recipes, these cake balls have been bouncing around a couple of my favorite blogs, Bread and Honey being one of them, but it was Bakerella that dreamed up its creation.  I really wanted to make these as true pink velvet cake balls with cream cheese frosting, but because they had to survive 5 days of shipping, I went with a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.  I am definitely going to try a dark chocolate dipped red velvet version of these next time, but this recipe definitely turned out pretty and was perfect for Valentine's Day!

I used the NY prize-winning vanilla cupcake recipe of Amy Sedaris from her freakish but hilarious book "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence" (check it out if you ever get the chance!) but she was good enough to post the recipe online here too.  Any vanilla or other cake recipe of your choosing should do quite nicely.

So, to the cake batter, I added a heaping toothpick full of plain old "pink" of my ol' standby - Wilton icing color.  These paste colors are a standby/must for any kind of baking.  Michaels is a great place to buy them, or online, of course - individually, or in nice sets like this.  You will never have to buy a big fat bottle of watered down food coloring again.  (Of course, then, some nice, natural beet juice would have worked beautifully too, if I hadn't used them all up making Dr. P's perfect blend juice! :-)

Add as little or as much color to your liking keeping in mind that the color does brighten up a bit after baking.

Pour your beautiful batter into a buttered and floured cakepan.  (*As a general rule, I like to butter and sugar all my cake pans, which gives cakes a nice crystalli-ness, but in this cake, we just want a buttered/floured surface.)

After baking, crumble your cake right bake into the pan.

Make up a frosting to your liking.  I've made so many that I just kind of wing it with butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and salt to taste, but Amy's is great too.  Like I mentioned, if I am not shipping these next time, I am definitely going to try a cream cheese frosting (basically, 1 block of cream cheese + 1 cube of butter + powdered sugar, milk, salt and vanilla to taste.)

Stir well into your cake crumbs until combined into a nice, moist, "dough."

Use your ol' reliable 1 T. cookie scoop to make up your balls, or you can hand roll them to whatever size you like...

... then refrigerate for at least an hour to harden before heading into the dipping phase:

Start your dipping/coating mixture.  I always try to use my favorite chocolate from our local company, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates.  Sweet Earth produces the only fair trade certified and certified organic white chocolate drops in the U.S.! (Way to set the bar so high, Dr. N!)

White chocolate is very touchy and easy to burn so you'll want to be careful when melting it.  I like to use this beautiful copper bowl (that I got second hand!) as the top of my homemade bain marie/double broiler setup.  Start a couple inches of water below into a low boil.  You'll want to be careful not to get any water into your chocolate to prevent any seizing.

Take your bowl of chocolate off the heat when there are just a few unmelted chips.  Continue to stir until fully melted.  White chocolate is very thick and cools quickly - here's a little trick for making it very smooth and a little thinner:  add a little canola oil, a bit at a time, until it reaches the perfect consistency when stirred!  (This trick works pretty much anytime you need a really smooth, thinner, white chocolate.)  You can then place your bowl back onto the somewhat cooled down water when you're done to keep it just warm enough for dipping.

Here's another fun trick - there is no need to go out and buy a fancy dipping fork for this project or other chocolate projects.  If you happen to have a plastic fork at home (well...let's hope you don't keep this nasty stuff around as general rule, but let's just say you happen to have one that you didn't want to throw out from when you had that salad the other day...) just break off the inner prongs, leaving the other two intact, et voila!  Instant chocolate dipping tool :)

We found the best way to coat the balls was to simply lower them into the chocolate and gently roll them until coated.  If this is done delicately, not too many crumbs will fall off. 

You can place the balls on an oil sprayed cooling rack over a cookie sheet (you might still need to unstick them a bit after cooling) or place them on parchment paper or sprayed down foil (but there will be a little bit of chocolate pooling under each one...) so- you're choice.  If you're looking to refrigerate these, let them come to room temperature before doing so.  

A fun sprinkling of sugar can be done while the balls are still warm, or leave as is.  

(Sure wish I had taken a photo of these cross-sectioned - but I'll leave that up to your imagination ;)

I decided to put each cake ball into its own If You Care baking cup - from a line of great unbleached parchment paper products that I get from our local health food store and which I thought looked really nice with the white chocolate.

So here they are - all dressed up and ready for Valentine's Day! :-)

Mickey Nonpareils and Microwave Tempering

Starting last November, Disneyland has been offering a really awesome deal - free admission to the Magic Kingdom on your birthday!  My friend and co-worker decided to go for her birthday this Friday, so I thought I'd send her off right with some Mickey treats.

I'd been wanting to make some nonpareil candies for a while.  I knew they'd be really simple to do and I had a jar of nonpareils sprinkles burning a hole in our cabinet so I thought some Mickey nonpareils would be just the thing!

The recipe is so easy peasy that I'm just going to spell it out step by step here:

Choose a good quality chocolate that will melt easily in the micro. (or that you can melt in a double broiler, if you so choose.)  I always try to use fair-trade, organic chocolate when I can (Dr. Neuhaus' Sweet Earth Chocolates are fantastic) but I already had a bag of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chips that I needed to use and I happen to know that it works well for this quick and easy micro. method so please forgive the breach...

Place 1 full teaspoon of shortening on top of your chips in a heat-proof cup/bowl.

Microwave on a lower (~50%) power and stir frequently (about every 10-20 seconds).  Remove the chocolate when there are just a few lumps left and stir until completely smooth.  This really helps preserve the integrity of the chocolate and saves it from getting fried.

Choose a medium sized parchment bag and fix with ~size 4 tip.  It is so much easier to put your bag into a glass like this to keep it upright and then open it up with a spatula to prepare for filling.  

I have a really great set of Wilton decorating tips and parchment bags that I keep in a caddy similar to this one - they are fantastic for all sorts of baking and decorating.  You'd be surprised how often these tools come in handy!

Pour the chocolate into your bag - filling it just enough so you can twist the top and have some hand control without too much chocolate spillage. 

On a parchment lined sheet, start your Mickeys by doing three simple circles and filling in. Experiment with different sized Mickeys for a nice variety.

(Little soldiers all in a row!)

Let your chocolate sit for about 20 minutes to partially set up, then sprinkle with nonpareils and let set completely.  You may refrigerate your Mickeys to really get them to set up solidly, but be aware that there could be some blooming that can occur if they aren't consumed right away due to the great changes in temperature (which doesn't hurt the flavor, but just does not for a pretty Mickey make.)

Since this chocolate was not tempered, the consistency of the candies at room temp. is more like that of the chocolate chips they started as, just slightly chewy.  This un-tempered chocolate worked out well, though, because my friend said that she would enjoy these so quickly that there wouldn't be any left to sit around and melt!

If you choose to use tempered chocolate, it will have the solid snap like that of a chocolate bar and will remain as such in various temperatures.  Here is a really effective and easy way that fair-trade chocolate entrepreneur and professor, Dr. N taught me (which worked wonders for coating the Mayan truffles I made for my sister's birthday!):

Microwave Chocolate Tempering

(*Works best on days when your kitchen is cooler than 80°.)

Start with a good couverture chocolate bar or disks (Valrhona, Callebaut, Lindt, or Scharffen Berger are great.)  This chocolate is very solid and shiny and snappy (versus softer, duller sheen of chocolate chips.)

Chop the chocolate into small chunks and place in microwave-safe bowl.

Heat chocolate at ~50% power for 30 seconds.  Stir chocolate, and repeat heating for 30 seconds and stirring until about 2/3 of the chunks are melted and about 1/3 are still in soft lumps.  Stop heating.  The temperature of the chocolate at this point will be about 100°.  Continue to stir until the soft lumps disappear and the temperature of the chocolate is at 89° (take a reading with your digital thermometer for accuracy.)

At this temperature the chocolate should be in temper and ready for use!

Sprinkle your Mickeys with just a little bit of nonpareils...

...or a lot!

(Even the backs turn out pretty cute.)

All snuggled up in their "Fancy Flours" gift box ...

...and dressed up in appropriate Mickey colors!  :-)  So fun.

Please visit Sweet Earth's website here for more information about fair-trade chocolates and why this process/certification is so important.

 

Horchata Almonds

Talk about lucky - we were recently gifted a huge (50 pound!) box of beautiful raw almonds at work from a farmer friend.  I packaged some up for my boss who quickly turned them over to me because he said that raw almonds get stuck in his throat when he tries to swallow.  Hmmm, well that immediately made me start dreaming up what to do with them bake-wise:  almond flour? home-made marzipan? bear claws?  As yummy as those all sounded, it was getting close to Christmas so I decided to try some yummy, cinnamon-y, vanilla-y concoction of partially dreamed up, partially looked up, and alas, finally "named up" (by my sis):  "Horchata almonds."  What started as a search for candied almonds led to a sinfully delicious and easy flavor that my Mexi-culinary chef sis perfectly described as: "...these taste just like horchata!"

Horchata Almonds

*preheat oven to 250°

Yield: 3 cups

Ingredients:

1 egg white

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. cold water

3 cups whole almonds (if raw - toast slightly first)

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Directions:

-Line a 10x15 inch jellyroll pan with parchment paper, lightly buttered or sprayed.

-Lightly beat the egg white; add water and vanilla; and beat until frothy but not stiff.

-Add to nuts and stir until well coated.

-Mix the white and brown sugars, salt, and cinnamon, and sprinkle over the nuts.

-Toss to coast, then spread evenly in pan over parchment paper.

-Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven until golden, stirring occasionally with a spatula to keep nuts separated, about every 15 min.  (Be careful not to overbake - nuts will start to harden and get crunchier once they are cool.)  

-Allow to cool completely, then store nuts in airtight containers.  Nuts will keep fresh for almost 1 month, covered.

If you have raw almonds as wonderful as these at home, just toast them slightly for a few minutes and let cool.

This is definitely one of those recipes where high quality ingredients make all the difference.  Try organic white and brown sugar for this - the taste and texture just cannot be beat.

The egg whites are beat just until frothy/soft peaks form (be careful not to overbeat.)

Gently fold in...

...and add your spices.

Fold carefully to blend...

...and make sure to layer on top of parchment paper that has been sprayed (on both sides helps it to stick a bit to your sheet.)  

I decided to package these in the container of my favorite Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream carton with cute honey bee ribbon.  Wouldn't you love to find these little gems in your stocking?  mmmmm  :-P