Peppermint Cake Balls

I have been on a bit of a peppermint kick it seems.  In actuality I just didn't want to toss out the left over candy canes I had Pork Chop crush up.  So I was really just being lazy, but you know that right?  And I bet that this will come as no surprise that this post is from way back in December.  I know, I got way ahead of myself and did all this baking and then ran out of time. So you may notice a slight holiday feel to the things I am planning to post soon, and you can just keep them in mind for next Christmas; okay?

Sad thing about this post, all you get to see are my balls, (HA!)  and a bowl of crushed up candy. Pretty lame if you ask me.

 Basically this is a two picture post, because I bet you are sick of seeing pictures of my balls.  And yes I just said that.  And yes, I know how it sounds.  And yes, I am thankful my mother never reads this.  

 So anyway.  This is basic, but yummy.  And that is all you need to know.  You are basically making a regular cake ball, but before you get too far you need to have peppermint extract and crushed candy canes.  If you do not have a Pork Chop of your own to do your candy cane crushing, you can totally skip it.  I just happen to have one, and he likes to smash things.  

  So to make these you bake a cake, any old cake you want, but as you know I prefer chocolate cake mix cake.  So anyway you bake and cool your cake, then crumble it up.  Then instead of adding frosting, add some peppermint extract first, I don't know how much, just as much as you want, if you like a lot of mint, add a lot.  Anyway add it then mix, then add enough frosting to get it to how you like your cake ball mix.  You are not going to need as much as usual, but still add it.  Then do your cake ball thing, make the cake balls, dip them in chocolate and decorate how you like.  I did it with the crushed up candy canes to add some extra mint and crunch.  It's what I do, I use the left overs so I don't have to clean them up. I'm smart that way.

Funny thing is this was one of those things my friends at work went nuts over, I got to love them.  They tell me my balls are awesome.  And who doesn't like to hear that right?

 Also just in case you would like to, I joined a site that promotes Mom blogs, so there is a button way at the tippy top of my page, right there on the right.  If you click it, it takes you to the mommy blog site that lists all sorts of fun mom blogs.  I also can be ranked and maybe get more readers, which would be cool, because I certainly have enough crazy to go around!

I'm linking up HERE

 

Chocolate Covered Oreo's

  This is going to be one of my easiest posts ever. I made these in like 5 minutes and I love how they turned out.  I also made another variation a few days later but we will get to that.

  Also we had my work holiday party this past Friday.  I now have seen it all, well if you count a fake Rod Stewart trying to pull my dress up everything, well then I have seen it.  I had a blast, I don't drink, and Hubby hardly dances but this year he did.  So it was all good, I didn't win any prizes but I got to dance and stay out late and wear a dress and you know, not do anything else.  So all in all it was awesome, now back to the cookies.

I may have made a few things this day, but this is the cookie box. It is sort of pretty actually.

Firstly I must admit, that I am not an Oreo cookie lover.  I mean I used to eat them, or more truthfully I ate the middle, then tried to give away the cookie part.  They are not bad, just not my idea of a cookie I want to always eat.  Now you make something with an Oreo and that I will eat, and want more of.  It's weird, but so am I, so don't even bother trying to figure it out.

I had three molds, if I had four it would have done the whole box, but whatever it was so fast I just did one mold twice.

  When we were grocery shopping the last time at Wal mart I saw these peppermint Oreo like cookies.  And I figured, well I got cookie molds so I better use them before the season passes.  As I have had molds like this for a few years, and every year I say I am going to use them.  And so I finally did, even for the right season, I am impressed with myself if I do say so.

That is as close to 2/3 full as I can figure out, they need marks on the mold or something.

 So all you need for this is the cookies, plain oreos or whatever;  I think any cookie of the same size would work.  And you need chocolate and the molds.  That's it, and it looks really fancy when you are all done, so get ready to be "Super amazing cookie maker of the year!"

  Or you know, just get ready to eat some cookies.

And see how the chocolate was all lop sided and not covering the cookie, that did not make me happy.

 So firstly you need to melt your chocolate.  Some of the molds just had a simple pattern, others had an actual image, like Santa and stuff.  If you had time and the skill, or even if you really cared, you could use coloured chocolate to make the picture and then just fill the rest with regular chocolate.  But as we all know how lazy I am, and that each step keeps me from having a cookie sooner, I did milk chocolate.

As you can see I tried to fill in the lop sided empty spaces, it just made a mess.

I melted the chocolate and put it into a large squeeze jar thingy. Then according to the instructions I filled the candy mold about 2/3 of the way full.  Then I tapped the mold to make the chocolate settle and get rid of air bubbles.  Then I just put a cookie in and pressed it down until it made the chocolate reach the top of the mold.  I was hoping the cookie would get fully covered, but that didn't happen.  Oh well.

They did turn out to be pretty cute though.

So then I just put the molds in the freezer and in like 10 minutes they were done and I popped them out.  Now I liked them, and my friends really did too, but I found that the chocolate was so thick on the top of them that it was not a great combination.  So I did them again another way, which I will share later.  But either way they were good, and looked really cute.

This was the simple mold, just snow flake outlines.  Simple but fancy.