Green Velvet Irish Cream Cake Balls

I've been wanting to make this recipe for the last couple months. St. Patrick's day has been much anticipated for this reason alone! I love being festive, so I've been wanting to find a recipe for a green cake to make for the Irish holiday. I planned on just doing cupcakes, but then I heard about cake balls. Cake rolled up with frosting into a ball and dipped in almond bark. Yum! When I found this recipe from Bakerella and discovered it was really a red velvet recipe using green instead of red, I knew this was it. My only change was that I added some Bailey's irish cream liquor to make it just that much more festive (of which I may or may not have had a few glasses of over the last few days...). Green + Bailey's = St. Patrick's Day, all wrapped up in a little tasty ball. Oh boy!

As I was mixing the cake ingredients, I realized that I don't think I've ever made a cake from scratch. I've made cookies, pies, and breads from scratch, maybe even some brownies, but for cakes I've always just done a box mix.

So here is the cake recipe, courtesy of Bakerella, with a few alterations of my own:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 cup oil (this amount is actually reduced from the original recipe and even then it was still pretty moist, so you could probably reduce this a little more)
1 cup buttermilk
1 Tbsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla
1 oz green food coloring
Bailey's Irish Cream liquor
1 tub cream cheese frosting
2 packages almond bark or melting chocolate

Grease and flour a 13x9 pan and preheat oven to 350 degrees. Gently stir eggs in medium bowl with wire whisk, then add remaining liquid ingredients until blended. Note - it is really, really green! At this step, I also added about 1/8 cup Bailey's Irish Cream liquor. In separate large mixing bowl, mix all dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and mix for about a minute or until completely blended. Pour into cake pan, drop pans on counter a few times to release air bubbles, then bake for about 35 minutes.

When done, allow cake to cool for about 10 minutes in the pan, then move to a cooling rack to continue cooling. Cut off any dry/hard edges (and eat them, of course!) and then break up the cake into another big bowl. Once cake has completely cooled off, crumble the cake up completely.

Stir in some frosting - I used about 1/2 to 3/4 of a tub of frosting, you don't need the whole thing. I also added another splash of Baileys at this step too :-). Stir it all together until well blended and smooth and it can be formed into balls that hold together on their own. Refrigerate this mixture for a few hours or overnight.

The next day, form the cake mixture into bite-sized balls and put on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. Stick them in the freezer for another few hours to continue to harden up.

Using a double-boiler if you can, melt down the almond bark - I ended up using 1.5 packages. Oh and note: do NOT add more Baileys to the melted almond bark - it hardens it back up and it will not melt again. Frustrating. I had to go back out to the store to buy more almond bark. Also, don't add food coloring to it. I tried to dye some of it green to drizzle over the top of the balls as decoration, and again it clumped up.

Using whatever method works best (I tried toothpicks, tongs, spoons, and fingers - all messy, none gave a smooth pretty ball, but I think spoons were easiest for me). Dip each ball individually into melted almond bark and coat thoroughly, then set on wax paper to cool. This process was not nearly as easy as it sounds. You have to work fast though because once the cake balls warm up, they start to crumble.

Notice how mine did not turn out very pretty, it was a sloppy mess. Guess I'll just have to try again sometime...

So, these were a little bit of work. It took 2 evenings of baking and some frustration. Sipping on some Bailey's while baking definitely helped :-) This recipe was definitely a keeper, they turned out really yummy. And the best thing is that it can be modified so many ways - any cake mix, any frosting flavor, etc. Must. Try. Again.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

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