After a devastating culinary weekend last, err, weekend, I have come back with a vengeance to redeem myself. So far this weekend I have made grilled cheese, raviolis, Petits Fours, cake balls, Rosemary chicken, red beans and rice, and this morning, Papa sandwiches with sausage.

Yesterday, Teacher Sis and I made a sticky mess of her kitchen in an attempt to ice Petits Fours with homemade fondant. Instead of doing the rational thing of following Irma’s instructions, we rationalized our way into a culinary disaster. But we rebounded and ended up icing them with an almond bark concoction. They turned out to be exactly like Hostess cupcakes. If we add a little whipped cream in the center and pipe a swirly of icing on top, we would have homemade Ding Dongs. Awesome.

After the failed fondant experiment, I prepped another batch of fondant the proper way, and it is now resting in a cool place for the required 24 hours to over a week, as per the instructions. Do you wanna see our final spread of delicious confectionary goodies? Check it out:

From left, Petits Fours with chocolate almond bark icing, failed fondant iced Petits Fours, and Red Velvet cake balls coated with vanilla almond bark.

Pretty sweet, eh? Oh and that ramekin in the front is a peanut butter cup made with the leftover chocolate almond bark mix. I ended up giving it to Prop Ninja for helping me make cake balls.

I bet you are wondering what these cake balls are that I keep talking about. They are only one of the simplest and most brilliant desserts ever.

What you do is pick your favorite cake, from a box or from scratch, and bake it like you would if you were going to eat it in a traditional way. Once the cake is baked and cooled (very important), crumble it into a large mixing bowl. Then dump a can of the icing of your choice in and mix the icing and cake together until you have a big pile of cake mush. Using your hands or a melon baller (I would not recommend using a cookie dough scoop because your cake balls will be huge. It’s a curse, really it is.) make the cake mush into 1 inch (2.54cm) balls. Impale the cake balls on toothpicks and place them on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper (You’ll thank me later). Once the cookie sheet is filled or you run out of cake mush, place the sheet in the fridge to firm up. While the cake balls are firming up, take and melt almond bark in a double boiler. Once again, the almond bark can be whatever flavor you choose. When the almond bark is nice and melty creamy, remove the cake balls from the fridge and dip them into the almond bark and return them to the cookie sheet. Once all of the cake balls are coated return the sheet to the fridge until your party guests begin to arrive or, in my case, you decide it is time to eat cake balls. Delicious!

T.S. and I used a Betty Crocker Red Velvet cake with cream cheese icing and vanilla almond bark. The possibilities are relatively endless. I have been considering a German chocolate with coconut pecan icing and dark chocolate almond bark. You could actually substitute the cake for cookies, such as Chips Ahoy or Oreos, or substitute the almond bark for Tollhouse morsels. Endless sweet goodies. The only question is which to try first.

Today’s agenda probably involves eating leftovers and helping Word to Me make some sort of cake balls for dinner at her church. At some point I need to clean up my office and give G-Man a haircut. This is the life I lead.

I need to get to work on this stuff, but I will leave you with a food Haiku:

Food! It gives us life.

Fills our hearts and bellies up.

My sanctuary.

More soon. ~SC