Monday, January 24, 2011

Red Velvet Cake Balls and Handmade Candy Boxes


If you are looking for a great alternative to boring store bought candy this year for Valentine's Day, cake balls are a great alternative.  I made a batch in Red Velvet, feel free to oooh and ahhh now.  I shaped them and decorated them to resemble traditional Valentine's candy.  These are a great start for anyone who is a little intimidated by traditional candy making, plus they are a nice little surprise when you bite into them.

Red Velvet Cake Balls

1 box Red Velvet Cake Mix
1 can cream cheese frosting

Bake cake according to instructions in a 9x13 inch pan.  Let cool and crumble up into a bowl.  Add the can of frosting and mix it all together.  Using a teaspoon or candy scoop make small balls of the mixture, you can shape them into heart shapes, squares and rectangles like I did if you choose or just do the ball shapes.  Put them in the freezer for 10-20 minutes and then dip in melted chocolate or candy melts and top with Valentine's sprinkles.

For the box, I followed these simple origami instructions found here, the only thing I changed was I used a 12x12 sheet of scrapbook paper for the top of my box and trimmed a piece to 11x11 to use as the bottom of my box.  A box this size holds about 5 or 6 cake balls if you do one layer, I did two and just cut a piece of paper to separate  the layers.