.carrot cake balls.

I've been thinking about Easter.  It's coming up soon, you know.  Well, I wanted to put together a variety of Spring-type desserts and foods and put them here on the blog.  

What do you traditionally have at Easter anyway?  I usually do a ham with herbed gratin potatoes, some type of veggie and/or salad, rolls, and a dessert -- usually lime pie.  I'm thinking of doing something different this year and would love to hear what you fix.

So back to these Easter-y, Spring-y recipes.  The lemon meringue cupcakes fit into this group as do these:  Carrot cake balls.  Yummy!  I'm sure your family and friends will enjoy these nuggets of goodness this Easter holiday!

Begin by making 1 carrot cake.  (recipe)

Then make some cream cheese frosting by creaming 1/2 cup butter and 1 8oz pkg cream cheese.  With the mixer on low, slowly add 4 cups powdered sugar.  When all the powdered sugar has been incorporated, add 1 tsp vanilla.

Now comes the fun part -- crumbling the cake!!  Get the kids involved if you want.  There's no wrong way to do this but just make sure they break it apart good enough so there aren't big chunks.

Spoon in the cream cheese frosting (yes, ALL of it!)  If you think this might be too sweet, then by all means, don't dump it all in.

Mix well with using a spatula.

I've heard people using a teaspoon, spooning some out, rolling it in their hands, and then dipping in chocolate.  I didn't have that kind of time because the hubs was taking these to work so I used my small (2 Tbsp) ice cream scooper.  It worked PERFECTLY!!!  I really suggest going that route.

My freezer isn't wide enough to slip a cookie sheet in there, so I used plates.  See how yummy those look?

Before dipping in chocolate, you're definitely going to want to put these in the freezer for awhile (like an hour or longer) to firm them up and make them not so sticky.

Recipes I have seen called for regular chocolate.  Chocolate and carrot cake doesn't sound good to me, so I used white chocolate. 

If you've never worked with white chocolate, it can be a total pain.  It needs to be melted on LOW heat and watched like a hawk.  If you start getting it too hot, it will begin seizing on you.  If this happens, add a little vegetable oil to bring some fat back into the equation and work out the lumps.  It's happened to me so I know. :)

However, what I did *this* time was use 1 1/2 bags Ghiradelli white chocolate and 1 bag Wilton vanilla candy chips.  The candy chips aren't nearly as fussy as white chocolate and I didn't run into any seizing problems.

I apologize for not having pictures of the actual dipping process but it's pretty straight forward.  You do NOT want to put the balls directly into the chocolate because it will 1) warm them too much and 2) they'll start breaking apart and you'll have cake pieces in your chocolate.  Not what we want.

So put a cake ball directly on a fork (or candy fork) and use a spoon to ladle the chocolate over the cake balls.  I kept a knife handy (just a small paring knife) to push the cake ball from the fork to a piece of parchment.  The parchment was sitting on  bakers rack.  Repeat this until all of the cake balls have been coated.  Put these in the fridge to firm up the chocolate.

I had leftover chocolate, so I tinted a little green, a little orange, and put into piping bags and made little carrots on top.  (That way they know what kind of yummy carrot goodness awaits them!)

These were a lot of fun to make and even though they were for my husband's co-workers, I did try one (poison testing!!) and they were fabulous!!!

Trim off any excess chocolate at the base of the balls if you want.  These need to be stored in an air-tight container in either the fridge or freezer.  They can be held up to a week in the fridge.