Car Bomb Cake Balls

1. Bake a Guinness cake by substituting Guinness for the water in a Devil’s food cake mix, and including all of the other required ingredients to complete the cake mix. Just follow the directions on the box including cooking time (as a rough estimate — still do the toothpick test to be sure) but substitute the beer for the water that the mix typically requires.

2. Let the cake cool completely. You can even freeze it if you are going to roll and dip the balls on a different day. In fact, I’ve found that the balls are much easier to form if the cake is cold.

3. Chop up the chilled cake. Add a little less than half of the store-bought tub of icing to the cake and mix it in thoroughly. You can do this by a mixer or by hand. Then add the entire contents of a 50ml bottle of Bailey’s into the mixture and combine. Ordinary cake balls use an entire tub of icing, but adding the Bailey’s changes this because an entire tub of icing on top of the liquor would make the consistency of the cake mixture too ‘loose’. Add additional icing in dollops until the mixture seems to be coming together into something firm enough to hold a ball shape. I think I ended up using around 3/4 of the tub by the time I was done.

4. Roll or scoop the cake mixture into balls. Chill the balls in the freezer for about 30 minutes.

5. Melt some chocolate or candy coating in the microwave for dipping. Microwave for about 1.5 to 2 minutes but make sure to stir every 30 seconds or so – in order to make sure the chocolate doesn’t scorch. I normally thin it out with a little shortening, just a cap-full or so (I chose vanilla candy wafers for purely aesthetic reasons, the white on top of the dark looks like a pint of Guinness to me). Dip the cake balls into the chocolate, tap off the excess, place on a sheet of waxed paper and wait for them to set up. If they are nice and chilled, it won’t take too long.

6. If you want, drizzle some additional chocolate on the top in a decorative manner. I usually melt candy wafer (with slightly less shortening) and put it in a ziplock bag, snipping a tiny bit off of one corner of the bag. I use it like a decorator’s bag, and chuck it when I am done. No mess, no clean-up of decorator’s tips — easy. For these balls, I used white for the drizzle because I had my whole Guinness color scheme going on. But normally I drizzle on a contrasting color. It really helps distract the eye from imperfections in the dipping, trust me. I’m a horrible dipper, but drizzle on some extra chocolate and add some decorations, and the cake balls look great!

Remember, almost every step of this process is fungible, and there are tons of variations. I even toyed with the idea of injecting each ball with a Bailey’s and Whiskey ganache. I think I might try that next time, a cake ball version of Smitten Kitchen’s amazing looking cupcakes. Actually, I’d love to try the cupcakes themselves sometime.

If you want to make your own icing and/or ganaches, here are some great potential recipes:

Bailey’s Ganache (for rolling or use as frosting, this is a thick ganache)

Ingredients:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 Tablespoon Bailey’s

Directions:
1. Heat cream in a saucepan until almost boiling, then pour it over the chocolate chips in a heat-resistant bowl.
2. Stir until the chocolate melts. Let cool for 10 minutes in the fridge (stirring occasionally), and then whisk in the Bailey’s.
3. If you are going to roll balls in the ganache, you can do so at this point.
4. If you are going to use ganache in place of the frosting, put it into a mixing bowl, and mix it (with the whisk attachment if you have it, although the paddle will do) on medium until fluffy. Then mix it into the cake (at the point where I used the tub icing above) until the mixture is the proper consistency for making the balls.

Bailey’s and/or Jameson’s Ganache (for filling, this is a thinner ganache, adapted from Smitten Kitchen)

Ingredients:
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 Tablespoons of butter, room temperature
2 teaspoon Irish whiskey and/or Bailey’s (if you are using both liqours, either use one of each, or one of Jameson’s and two of Bailey’s)

Directions:
1. Heat cream in a saucepan until almost boiling, then pour over the chocolate chips in a heat-resistant bowl.
2. Stir until the chocolate melts. Add in the butter and whiskey. Let cool for about 10 minutes (stir occasionally), and then whisk in the Bailey’s.
3. You need some special equipment for this because if you want to actually fill the balls, you need to inject them. The best thing would be a heat-resistant metal baster with the injection tip that you can thread on the end, because the ganache has to be warm enough to still be liquified. If you were filling cupcakes, you would cool it until much thicker, as per Smitten Kitchen’s original directions. Fill the baster with the ganache and attach the injector tip. Plunge the tip in to the center of each undipped cake ball, squeeze out some ganache, and repeat. The you can dip the cake balls.

Please note that if you use either of the above ganaches, the cake balls must be stored in the refrigerator!

Bailey’s Buttercream Icing (adapted from Smitten Kitchen):
3 to 4 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperatue
3 to 4 tablespoons Baileys

Directions:
1. Whip the butter in the mixer for a few minutes, until nice and fluffy.
2. Slowly add the confectioner’s sugar. I mean really slowly, a few tablespoons at a time — you will need less sugar this way, and the finished product will be far less grainy than the average quick buttercream frosting. Thanks for the tip, Smitten Kitchen!!
3. When it looks spreadable, add the Bailey’s. Then you can combine with the cake (at the point where I used the tub of frosting above) to make the cake balls, but add it in dollops and combine, so the mixture doesn’t get too loose!