Cake Truffles, a.k.a. "Cruffles"

I'd heard rumors of such things, but never actually experienced these elusive "cake truffles" before. They go by many names, cake truffles, cake pops, cake drops, cake balls, and on and on. I like Cruffles, so that's how they will be referred to from now on by me.

The ingredient list is very short, unless you want to get into the more complicated flavors (which are not as simple as they seem. I attempted Chocolate Raspberry in addition to the ones in this post, however, they were a MAJOR fail. They will never be spoken of again.)

1 boxed cake mix
3/4 container frosting
Melting Chocolate

Yes, folks, thats it. The up side is that you don't have to use prepared frosting, or boxed cake, but trust me, these babies are enough work on their own, and making frosting and cake from scratch adds very unnecessary effort and time consumption.

So here we go! Bake the cake mix, as directed, in a 13x9 inch pan. Or whatever cake pans you have. It doesn't matter, as long as the cake bakes mostly evenly. I used a Betty Crocker Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix.

It figures that the one time in my whole life that the cake comes out completely clean from the pan is the one time when it doesn't matter. Step two, after the cake is cool, is to break it up into small pieces. I pulled my cake apart when it was still slightly warm, next time I think I will let it cool overnight and even dry out slightly. My truffle filling was a little mushy, and I think allowing it to cool more and dry out a bit would make it lighter. Or it could turn out complete crap. Who knows.

As you can see, the cake filled my monster mixer bowl to the brim. I have to say, I had a mini panic attack before turning it on. I envisioned little pieces of cake flying all over my freshly cleaned kitchen, and tears streaming down my cheeks. Luckily, Bailey was visiting Grandma & Grandpa for the day, so at least I didn't have to worry about him eating the flying cake particles.

Strangely enough, no cake flew out. I'm not sure how I can put in 1 cup of sugar and it flys all over the place, but fill the bowl with cake pieces, and its like they are magnetized to the inside of the bowl. ANYway... "whip" the cake pieces briefly to break them up to more uniformly sized pieces. Then begin scooping in frosting. I used Betty Crocker plain Chocolate Frosting. Start with only about half the container, and add in spoonfuls while mixing until it feels right. Make sure you scrape down the sides a few times, the frosting chunks like to hide up there.

Here is my truffle batter. Its super heavy, but smells amazing. I tasted a little piece at this point, and that assured me that no matter what, at this point, these were going to be awesome.

I cheated and used a cookie scooper to get uniform-sized balls. I highly recommend this utensil, I can't imagine doing this without the scooper. I rolled each one briefly in my hands, to make them more spherical. I think I got almost 60 from the entire recipe, but I only did half as plain chocolate. I reserved half the truffle batter to do as raspberry, but like I said before, you won't be seeing those here.
Throw them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. While they are chillin', melt the chocolate. I HIGHLY recommend Merkin's Brand Melting Chocolate. I've used them for a number of years making chocolate covered pretzels and candies with my mom for Christmas. You do need Cocoa Butter to melt the chocolate more smoothly, and to thin it out so you get more truffles covered with less chocolate.
Use a dipping bowl that has a smaller base rather than one that has a wide bottom. The chocolate will be deeper and you won't have to roll the truffles as much to get them covered. I used a spoon, but a dipper set would probably help if you had one. Dip each truffle, place back on the silicone sheet or onto wax paper. This will make removal later exponentially easier than if you place them directly onto a pan or cookie sheet.
Dip 2 or 3 truffles, then add any toppings, otherwise the chocolate will harden and the toppings won't stick. I used chocolate jimmies.
Once the tray is done being dipped and topped, put it back in the freezer for about 10 minutes, just to harden the chocolate. You can also put it in the refrigerator, for maybe a half hour. Pull them out, and enjoy!!

Darryl models the first bite... mmmmmmmmm!!! He didn't want his hands in the photo, he said he needed a manicure first. sigh.

Here's the finished product. I plan to make other flavors for Darryl and my work on Friday. I'll let you know how that goes. (: