This cake has balls!

Since my last post was a long winded rant, I figure it's time for a lighter, happier post about one of my favorite topics:  sweets.  In my adventures throughout the blogosphere I have started seeing cake balls all over the place.  I've seen a million recipes, and even purchased a gift box of them from Etsy.com to send to a friend in FL, but I've never had one and I've never made one, until now.

Today is a friend of mine's birthday so I decided to bake a cake, but then I found out someone else is already baking him a cake, and not one to be outdone, I decided to make sure my cake had balls...cake balls.  On St. Patty's day this year I made Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes to bring to a friends house, and so I had the better part of a bottle of Jameson and some Emmet's Irish Cream Liqueur still hanging around my house (I managed to take care of all of the Guiness without a problem though...) so I decided to continue with that theme and make Irish Car Bomb Cake Balls, but because this friend is an avid beer fan (and home-brewer) I decided to use a local brew instead of Guiness, and went with Rock Art's Stumpjumper Stout, which has a nice bold flavor that would stand up well in the dark chocolate cake.  Here's whats fun about cake balls:  It's like making a whole cake, but then you get to smoosh it!

I took the recipe from here but basically, I cheated and bought a boxed cake mix this time...making the process much easier and cheaper, but using the Stout in place of the water.  Bake that up in any shape or size you see fit, let it cool, and them smoosh the heck out of it!  Beat up a basic buttercream frosting, using the Jameson and Emmet's for flavoring, in place of vanilla (add to taste, about 3 tbsp Emmet's and 1 tbsp Jameson).  Add the cake crumbs to the frosting bowl and mix as you go, until well combined.  Scoop out onto cookie sheets in ~2 tbsp size balls and pop them in the freezer for awhile to harden up a bit (I left them in there over night).  Next melt up some chocolate to dip the frosty cake balls in, the recipe called for white, I did about half and half - one bag of white chocolate and one bag of dark covered the whole lot.  What an interesting treat they turned out to be!  I'm bringing them to the birthday party tonight, hopefully no one else will like them and I can bring them all back home.....just kidding!  :-)