Chocolate Cake Truffles

When I first started decorating cakes, I was hesitant to level my cakes properly because I was so bummed about how much cake would be wasted. I used to let my husband and friends eat the scraps, but sometimes no one was around to snack.
Then I discovered cake truffles! Now I keep all my cake scraps in the freezer so that when the time comes to make truffles, I have a great variety of cake to use!

If you don't just have cake lying around your house, you can still make these easily! I'll show you how!

You'll need cake. Like I said, I have a lot of cake in my freezer... if you don't bake a million cakes a week like I do, you can just bake one cake. Specifically for this. You can bake any flavor of cake! A box mix cake will work fine!

You'll also need frosting, about two table spoons. I use home made buttercream, but you can use canned. Vanilla, chocolate or cream cheese frosting seem to work best.

A package of candy melt. (Almond bark, chocolate coating etc) This stuff works best because it isn't as hard to temper as chocolate and once set doesn't melt like crazy just because you barely touched it.

You'll also want a large mixing bowl for the cake, a smaller microwave safe bowl to melt the chocolate in, a fork, a spoon and some candy and or sprinkles to top your truffles. Nuts work as well!

Wax paper and a couple of cookie sheets are nice to have as well.

Alright, so whether you have cake already or made a cake, just go ahead and dump it in the large mixing bowl. If you made a cake, please, let it cool. For at least an hour.
Mash it up and add two table spoons of frosting. Start mixing! It might not seem like a lot of frosting, but trust me, you don't want too much. If you get the cake too soggy, you're truffles won't be very good. After mixing with the spoon for a while, you'll want to switch to your hands. (Which, I hope, you will wash first!!) Mash it all together and test the consistency. After a while, it will become moist, but not sticky and will hold it's shape.
Once you've got it to that consistency, start rolling it into balls. I like to line my cookie sheets with wax paper and line the cake balls on them. I'd say ping pong or golf ball size is a good size to aim for.

Now stash them in the fridge if you can make room. Chilling them will help the chocolate set better when we coat them!

Start by cutting your chocolate into smaller pieces if you have a big hunk. Then pile it into a microwave safe bowl and melt it in 30 second bursts, stirring in between.
You're looking for a good, liquid consistency. (I know, you're probably sick of me using the word consistency.... at least I'm consistent at using it...)

First, dip the bottom of the cake ball into the chocolate. Then place it on the fork. Hold it over the bowl and use the spoon to pour chocolate over the ball. This is MUCH easier then trying to dip the balls and will give you a wonderful, smooth texture. Sort of shake the fork back and forth, letting the excess chocolate drip between the tines of the fork.

When you've got it covered and most of the excess has dripped back into the bowl, transfer the truffle to the wax paper. This takes some trial and error to get down, but I've found using a frosting spatula or a butter knife to push it off the fork works best.

Place candy or sprinkles on the truffle as soon as you get it down on the wax paper. That stuff sets quickly.

You might need to clean the fork off every few truffles in order to let the excess drip through.

You're going to have a lot of chocolate around the bottom of these things... go ahead and sort of trim it off with a knife and then check the bottoms of your truffles. The key to keeping them fresh is making sure they're totally sealed in chocolate. You'll probably find that most of your truffles have a bit of cake showing on the bottom. Go ahead and just barely dip the bottoms of the truffles on more time and place them on a fresh piece of wax paper. They shouldn't need trimmed again because you're just dipping them enough to fill the holes in the bottom.

Candy melt/almond bark type chocolate should totally set up on it's own without being put in the fridge.
Once they set up, I like to transfer them individually into mini cupcake liners and then put them in a box in the fridge. They are EXCELLENT when cold. So tasty.

I've keep a stash of these in the fridge for a couple of weeks and they kept just fine and tasted great still. Don't ask me how they lasted that long. I think it was because I literally made like 60 of them or something lol.

These things are so freaking good. Your friends and family are going to be begging you to make more, so get used to making them! Thankfully, practice makes perfect and every batch will be better than the last!

There's just something about that crunchy chocolate shell and that moist, rich cake center... you can't get enough!

Let me know if anything is unclear! I'm working on turning tutorials from my blog into instructables and it seems sometimes details get lost along the way!

Happy snacking!