Dark Chocolate Orange Cake Balls

You’d think, after almost 9(!!) years of blogging, and now working at Food52(!!!), that I’d have mastered simple things like layer cakes. (Indeed, I’ve had successes with a few in the past.) You’d think, would you not, that after endless cakes, a little something like turning a cake out of a pan would be no sweat.

You’d be so so so wrong.

I volunteered to bake my sister a birthday cake to celebrate her 29th year of existence, and she asked for a layer cake starring Deb Perelman’s chocolate olive oil cake. Reasonable request, right? Deb has never steered me wrong, and I already knew chocolate and olive oil were a match made in fudgy heaven.

And yet. The cake is simple enough — it requires only 9 ingredients, most of which are pantry staples, and creates an incredibly plush, deeply chocolate-y cake. I made a double batch, expecting to slice the layers into thin halves to create a four-layer cake. (Ambitious, I know.) The only problem? The cakes were basically glued to the bottom of my pans. Deb recommends lining the cake pans with parchment, but I figured since my pans were nonstick that a good solid buttering would suffice. Life lesson learned: always listen to the experts …

But nine years of blogging (not to mention, 30+ years of life) have taught me that often, fails are salvageable — very delicious but crumbled cake most of all. Cake balls immediately jumped to mind, and the fact that they’re much easier to transport cross-borough was the icing (pun intended) on the top. My original plan was to layer the cake with mascarpone-orange frosting, so that became the binder for these cake balls.*

I’m not going to lie to you: it was a huge pain to stand there and roll these out. I had a LOT of cake (two 9-inchers) and I used 1.5 of them to make 101(!!!) cake balls. I ended up freezing a third of them in rolled-out-but-pre-chocolate-coated form, because I didn’t have the patience or the chocolate chips to coat them all. So I think one 9-inch cake will yield 60 cake balls, which is lucky for you because cake fails aside, these are DELICIOUS.

They’re fudgy and deeply chocolate-y, with a subtle hint of orange. I didn’t sweeten the mascarpone, so it keeps the cake balls tangy and tender, but I did use a sweeter chocolate for the coating than I would otherwise (semi-sweet chocolate, which is usually 42% cacao — if you like your desserts a bit sweeter, I’d use milk chocolate for the coating). You could also of course use candy coating, which is technically better suited for this purpose and will likely give you a better looking cake ball. (Though in my humble opinion, nothing *tastes* better than real chocolate, and that’s what we’re really here for, amirite?)

I’m sure there are great takeaways from this experience about not giving up and learning from failure, etc. etc. but I’m a little busy eating cake balls to philosophize. May all your lessons in 2019 be this delicious!

*I love the creamy tanginess of mascarpone, but if you don’t want to bother with getting both mascarpone and cream cheese, then one or other will do!

Dark Chocolate Orange Cake Balls

• Yield: 60 cake balls 1x

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Ingredients

For the chocolate cake:

• 1–1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (Dutch or natural), sifted if lumpy
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1–1/2 cups water or coffee (I used coffee, which I highly recommend)
• 1 tablespoon white or apple cider vinegar (I used ACV)

For the “frosting”:

• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 4 ounces mascarpone cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon orange extract

For the cake balls:

• 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (42% or higher)
• sprinkles or nonpareils for decorating (optional)

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Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9-inch cake pan.
2. Make the cake: Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and granulated sugar in the bottom of a large bowl. Whisk in the brown sugar and olive oil. Add the coffee (or water) and vinegar, and whisk until smooth. Pour into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until the top is springy and a tester inserted in the center comes out with just a few sticky crumbs (but not a wet batter). Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack. Once the cake has cooled completely, crumble it.
4. Make the “frosting”: Using electric beaters, beat the cream cheese, mascarpone and orange extract until well combined and fluffy.
5. Line two baking sheets with wax or parchment paper. Stir in the cake crumbs and combine well, until the mixture has formed a “dough” that clumps easily. Roll the dough into tablespoon-sized balls, pressing the mixture together tightly, and place them on the prepared baking sheets. Cover lightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour (alternately, you can freeze them for 15 minutes).
6. Transfer the cold cake balls to one baking sheet, so that you have one with all of the cake balls, and one empty sheet lined with parchment or wax.
7. Melt the chocolate chips, either in the microwave (in 20-second bursts, stirring in between to ensure even heating) or in a double-boiler. Carefully coat each cake ball in chocolate, transferring them to the baking sheet to cool. (I found this easiest to do in batches — melt a quarter of the chocolate, coat 15 balls, sprinkle with nonpareils, melt more chocolate, coat more balls, sprinkle, etc. Don’t melt all of the chocolate at once, in case it overheats or seizes.)
8. Let the cake balls cool completely, then try not to eat them all at once.

 

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Notes

Cake recipe adapted slightly from Smitten Kitchen