The great cake ball debacle

I'm pretty sure that I am not the only one that has cake balls on their to-do list. My issue was I never had one. Nope, not ever, not even one. I certainly understand the concept. A ball of cake, mixed with frosting, covered in chocolate. Simple enough, right? Well, not really. Having never tasted one posed a few questions: what are they supposed to taste like? How moist are they supposed to be? How big are they supposed to be? How much frosting are you supposed to use? All these questions can only mean one thing- research. After sifting through tons and tons of information about cake balls aka cake truffles ( which really does have a much better ring to it) I did the next logical thing and bought some.

One name popped up a few times during all my reading so I went to http://www.austincakeball.com/.

I ordered 2 dozen in an assortment of flavors (german chocolate, vanilla bean, tiramisu, lemon, orange chocolate, salted caramel, red velvet) which was $53.90. After tax, S&H the total was $81.90. Expensive? not really? I reserved judgement until I actually tasted them. Truth be told, i'd pay $5 per cake ball if I bit into it and it was so good it made my eyes roll back in my head!

So fast forward about a week and they arrived. Like this:

I admit, for a company that ships little balls of cake, I thought they would be packed a little better. Maybe like this:

Ok, so 1 box received in good condition and 1 box not so much. Even Steven so far. I was torn between the lemon and the salted caramel because those are definitely my 2 most favorite flavors. I decided to go with the lemon. This is what it looks like in half:

I took a bite and thought really? Really? Is this what all the hype is about? I am not impressed. Not even a little. The cake was dry. It didn't taste like it had any frosting at all. I have no idea what kind of chocolate it was enrobed in but it didn't have much flavor. As for the actual taste of the cake, I only knew it was lemon because of the yellow drizzle on top. How sad. Maybe the next one will be better ( she thought optimistically). No dice. Long story short Austin Cake Ball redeimed themselves by refunding my money in full.

I made my own version of cake balls. I used a box mix and canned frosting. ( im having trouble posting the pic at the moment......im not so great at this, so this is a learning process for me as well) I thought it would be cute to use the confetti mix with rainbow chip frosting. I baked a 13x9 cake and crumbles it when it was cool. I didnt know how much frosting to add, so I figured i'd start off slowly. I added about 1/2 of the can and it formed into balls quickly. I tossed them in the freezer for about 20 minutes and then dipped them in melted chocolate. They were too wet in the middle and I didnt enjoy the texture at all. The cake ball experiment will have to be continued and hopefully they will be better next time.