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The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton

Thursday 27 July 2006

Choccie balls - turning a flop into a success

I am feeling quite pleased at the moment, although four days ago I was feeling quite annoyed. See, we told Dad and Hania that we'd bring dessert for lunch at their house on Sunday. So I thought I'd make something nice, something that I'd done before and that I know would work. I'd made a chocolate cake before which received good feedback so I decided on that. Only it didn't work out as well. The flour wasn't right (that's the trouble with buying flour from a bulk dry goods store like Kakulas Bros where the labels can be easily mixed around) - I have a feeling that the flour was actually bread flour (strong flour) instead of self raising flour like the label indicated. The resulting cake mix was quite dough-y, like bread dough. Hm. I thought I'd bake it anyway and at the end of the cooking process: "Rob, the cake looks very much like bread". Indeed, instead of the yummy moist chocolate cake I was expecting, the cake was dry and crumbled to bits. I was pretty annoyed because this is the first thing I made for Dad and Hania and it was a flop - and my first cooking flop too!

Anyway, as expected, there were lots of leftover cake and I was at a loss at what to do with them. I hate throwing out food, especially when lots of good ingredients were used to make it (all that yummy dark choc!!). I googled and didn't find many suggestions for leftover cake crumbs except for making biscuits or trifles. And then I remembered making truffles for Christmas, and I'd used the crumbs of plum pudding for one of them. Hehe..

So I turned this flop into a success! I still remember Rob's reaction when he tried one of the choc balls :) I brought the choc balls to work on my last day at work (amongst the sushi platter and pizza) for the morning tea I held for my collegues to commemorate the occassion. There were no leftovers..

Ingredients

Leftover flop a.k.a. dark chocolate cake
Honey
Jam (I used a mixed berry variety)

Method

1. Remove the ganache coating on the cake and crumb the cake.
2. Mix the cake crumbs with some berry jam and honey until the mixture attained a sticky consistency (add a little at a time to ensure that you are not left with a gloopy mess). Use your (clean) hands for this job!
3. Roll into balls and coat with coconut or caster sugar
4. If the weather is cool, then it is okay to store outside the fridge. In fact, I found that refridgeration will cause condensation which will make the sugar coating dissolve.




2 comments:

  1. hey! well done! those choc balls look fabulously delish *mmMMmm* i looove choc. your very creative - me? id've ate my way through that flop cos im just too stubborn haha. all the best in Japan!
    jme
    www.xanga.com/happley8may

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