this is safe for work though, no worries here!There will be a lot of gratuitous photo-age in today's post - it's a summary of 3 days blood, sweat, and... wait, nix those, just 3 days of kitchen dalliance. The only reason this project took three days of course was that I got tired and lazy part way though the final steps and so let the fridge keep these little guys nice and firm while I vegged out on the couch (and listened to the soundtrack to Mamma Mia over and over and over... I'm in love with it).
I'll let the dirty minds out there fill in all the connotations that "firm pink balls" brings out (trust me, my sister's got you all beat on the timing for that one). Even I started making wisecracks (to myself, sadly, I am ever-alone in my kitchen it seems!) as I fondled - er... hand-shaped - 60 of these truffle-like confections. Thanks to Bakerella for the inspiration!
I of course wasn't content with the Red Velvet variant. Ohh, nosiree. I mean, I love Red Velvet as much as everyone else out there does, I mean come on who doesn't like chocolate cake when it's that pretty? But I knew I'd be covering these in bittersweet chocolate, and that they would all be going into my mom's workplace (well, almost all of them... I've saved one of each batch for both my dad and Andrew, and a small bag of the Coconut-Rum ones went with my grandparents). Most of Mom's workplace is made up of sweet teeth, but considering the last thing to go in were my (very well-recieved) Carnival Cookies, I wanted to jazz up the whole chocolate routine. I did like the colour contrast idea, though, so I dug through my box of extracts and came up with coconut and rum extracts, rose water and a super-concentrated cherry flavouring. Why not do two batches? I reasoned, it's just a few more ingredients!
Out came the good old recipe binder, with an eggless, butterless and milkless rec
ipe from a source lost long long ago! A few tweaks here and there, a dash of food colouring and BAM! The basics of cake-ballage were born.Now to differ the outsides of the treats. I made and boxed up the coconut ones before taking any photos (which explains the vibrant pinkness of this post!) so for the cherry-rosewater batch I drizzled white chocolate haphazardly over the tray before sprinkling them with red sanding sugar. For some odd reason, the white chocolate didn't set completely by the time I went to bed 6 hours later, so I threw them in the fridge overnight. I love modern technology, don't you?
Being that my house was rather warm while I was making these, I needed to chill them overnight before dipping them in chocolate (I used coating chocolate over chocolate bark, don't know what the difference is though! Otherwise, I followed Bakerella's method - with the exception that I only used about 1/4 cup of vanilla frosting per round, thinned with a touch of whole milk. I also did two dippings' worth of coatings, since I lack any finesse when it comes to candy-coating and there were both patches missing chocolate and rough, ridgy bits. As you c
an see, they didn't become perfect but they are coated, and I came away from that experience with very brown fingernails and a newfound appreciation for candymakers and chocolatiers!Each moist, fluffy cake round made about 30 "truffle-size" balls, but if you're serving these AS cake, they're about 8-person cakes (or cupcakes!).
Where Did the Rum Go? Cake
Serves 8
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup raw cane sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup water
1/4 cup oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp coconut extract
1/2 tbsp rum extract
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8" cake pan
- Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Combine remaining ingredients in another bowl, add to the dry mix and beat well (using electric beaters for 2 minutes or by hand for about 4 - you want it totally smooth).
- Bake for 35 minutes.
Amount Per Serving 
Calories: 214.5
Total Fat: 7.2 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 0.9 mg
Total Carbs: 35.8 g
Dietary Fiber: 2.0 g
Protein: 3.1 g
The following is a crazily hot pink cake (hence the photos), and the amount of cherry extract is correct - I used LorAnn's flavouring which is about 10x stronger than the average!
Cherry in the Roses Cake
Serves 8
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup raw cane sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup water
1/4 cup oil
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp red food colouring
1 tsp rosewater
1/8 tsp concentrated cherry flavouring (or 1/2 tbsp regular)
1 tsp vanilla
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8" cake pan.
- Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Combine remaining ingredients in another bowl, add to the dry mix and beat well (using electric beaters for 2 minutes or by hand for about 4 - you want it totally smooth).
- Bake for 35 minutes.
Amount Per Serving
Calories: 212.0
Total Fat: 7.2 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Sodium: 0.9 mg
Total Carbs: 35.6 g
Dietary Fiber: 2.0 g
Protein: 2.9 g
Those are so cute, fabulous color!!!
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