Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake Balls

This recipe is great for those who love Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, because they taste really similar to them. They are basically chocolate cake balls with a peanut butter filling coated with peanut butter candy coating, and drizzled with dark chocolate. I've made regular cake balls before, and it's a lot more work however (4 layers of work). If you want you can skip the filling all together. There's not a whole lot more value added, for the amount of time it takes. Or even skip the chocolate drizzle. Again, its up to you to modify the recipe.

You start off by making the cake. You can bake your own cake from scratch (which I did not do), use a cake mix, or buy a pre-made cake. I usually use the Duncan Hines dark chocolate fudge cake or devils food cake mixes. You also need frosting, which you can make yourself again, but I use the dark chocolate fudge frosting. Again, c'est ton choix. Depending on how chocolately you want it to taste, you can use various frostings.

Once you have the cake, crumble it up and add spoonfuls of frosting little at a time to the crumbled up cake, mushing it with your hands, until it becomes a playdough-y texture. I never follow exact recipes, and situation varies on how big your cake is, so I'm not going to list down measurements. Once it becomes playdoughy, roll it into balls with your hands. Set aside. Remember to leave some dough to close up the cake ball if you're going to have filling.

To make the peanut butter filling, add about a teaspoon of butter for every two tablespoons of peanut butter, melt in the microwave. Then add a bit of vanilla extract, and keep adding a little bit of icing sugar in the mixture till it becomes a bit of cookie dough texture. And there, you have your filling!

To put it in the cake balls, use the square end of the chopstick to poke a hole in the middle of the cake ball, and the other end to put the filling in. Kneed a little chunk of the cake ball mix to close up the ball and roll it back into a ball shape with your hands again. Freeze these for about 20-30 minutes.

The peanut butter candy coating is just peanut butter chips that you can get in little bags at the aisle of the grocery store where you get your baking chocolate. This was tricky and experimental. I would melt the chips with a bit of butter in the microwave. How much? I don't know. Maybe 2 teaspoons for every handful of chips? But I kept doing it until it sort of has the viscosity of honey, but a bit more liquidy. Then I roll the balls into these with a spoon, and set it on a pan covered with parchement paper. (Crucial because I tried without and the cake balls would get stuck to the pan). Once done, put in fridge again for about 20 minutes or till hardened.

I take dark baking chocolate and melt it in the microwave until liquidy again, and then use the spoon to drizzle it over the balls. And Voila!! Cake balls.