Bakerella Cake Balls

The last dessert I made for Dizzy's shower were quite delicious...and easy! You might remember them from this post. Bakerella totally made these famous, so I cannot take credit for this recipe at all. You can find her recipe here. Mine is as follows:

-1 box Betty Crocker butter recipe yellow cake
-1 can cream cheese frosting
-about 4 boxes of Baker's white chocolate
-sprinkles
-parchment or wax paper

1. Make cake and let it cool completely (I waited about 6 hours)
2. crumble cake into a large bowl and mix thoroughly with 1 can of cream cheese frosting
3. chill mixture (I chilled it for about 3 hours)
4. roll mixture into balls. We used a standard size cookie scooper so that each ball would be the same size.
5. melt chocolate in microwave per directions on the package, 1 box at a time. (If you melt all the chocolate at once, it gets hard to work with)
6. Roll balls in chocolate using a spoon. Tap off excess chocolate in the spoon back into the bowl.
7. place on wax/parchment paper until firm. (Place in refrigerator to speed up this process)

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Yummy! When I tested these out about a month ago, I brought most of them to work and everyone loved them so much that they all made their own versions over the next few weeks. We had cake balls in our kitchen area for the next 2 weeks.

If I may offer an observation, the white chocolate almost always goes over better than the dark. I think it is something about the white chocolate being softer and easier to bite into or something.

bonus points for me being able to use my cupcake tower! woohoo!

Betty Crocker Cookie Brownie bars

These are so freakin good, I can hardly stand it. I also got this recipe from the fabulous Bakerella. You can find her post here.

The recipe is quite easy. Here it goes:

1. Buy the Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownie bar box mix and make the bars according to the package in an 8x8 pan.

2. After the bars have baked, top with chocolate ganache.

-6 oz. (about 1 cup or half a bag) semi-sweet chocolate morsels (Bakerella's recipe called for a whole bag, but I thought that was too much - you could hardly taste the brownie- so I halved the recipe)
-1/4 cup and 2 Tbsp heavy whipping cream
-3 Tbsp butter

3. In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before the boiling stage.

4. Pour over the chocolate morsels.

5. Let stand about 20 seconds and stir until smooth.

6. Pour over brownies and let set before cutting. (Both times I made this, I let it set overnight before cutting them.)

I mean, dang. These are so good.

party style fruit pizza

All the desserts I made for Dizzy's shower were super easy, completely delicious and totally semi-homemade. Anyone can make them. First up is an adaptation of a fruit pizza recipe. Instead of making it in pizza form, I decided to make it into individual portions.

recipe:

-Pillsbury sugar cookie dough roll
-1 8oz cream cheese (I used neufchatel cheese)
-1/3 cup sugar
-1/2 t vanilla
-fruit

1. roll out cookie dough and cut out circles -or- cut 1/4 inch sections off the roll.

2. Bake according to package until it is golden brown

3. Cool completely

4. beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla together.

5. When the cookies cool, spread the frosting on them.

6. place fruit on cookies - strawberries, blueberries, kiwis, raspberries, and/or mandarin oranges work best.

7. Serve within about 5 hours, or the cookie will become rather soggy.


To make this in pizza form:

roll out softened cookie dough in a greased circle pan or you can just break it into pieces and sort of mold them together to make a relatively thin crust. Follow directions 2-5. Place fruit in triangle sections.


So yummy! And attractive, right? I'm not even a blueberry fan and I want to gobble those up. Enjoy!