Chocolate Cake Balls

I love to bake. It relaxes me and it’s something I’m good at, but it’s difficult to bake here when everything is different; the ingredients, the stove, the pans, the tools to mix things and measure things. The last post I talked about my search for cake ingredients.

I got everything I needed except eggs. Did I mentioned I only need four eggs? It’s possible to purchase one egg, two eggs, or a dozen eggs. I can also go to the store and buy one stick of gum. I can open a package of individual wrapped cookies that says “not for individual sale” and buy one package. It’s just the way things are here. I went to the market to get the eggs and they weren’t on the shelf. “Are you out of eggs?” I said. “How many you want?” said the woman behind the counter. I quickly respond “four”. She disappears and comes back minutes later with four eggs – still warm.


Today it has rained almost all day and so I decide this is a good day to make this cake. It’s Friday and Brenda will likely be at the Village Council Office down the road. She’s the whole reason I decided to make this cake. It was her birthday this week. She is the Community Development Officer and I’m working with her. She’s been good to me and I want to do something nice for her.


This is a recipe I’ve made a hundred times. The only difference is that I will be making it in individual size pans that I found in Castries. Why? Well, because as I’ve mentioned before my stove is run from this propane tank and I have a hard time lighting it. Actually, I’ve only used it once and I was able to light it right away. I think the truth is that I don’t want to use it, but I’m not sure why. But that’s what toaster ovens are for – right?


Oh, there is one more difference. As you might remember, I could not find instant chocolate pudding. I did, however, find custard mix. Although most of the information on the package was in Japanese, I was able to read the English directions that told me this custard was not instant but needed to be cooked.


Anyway, the instant pudding didn’t have to be made before adding it to the rest of the ingredients. The ingredients are simple: a chocolate cake mix, four eggs, sour cream, oil, water, instant pudding and chocolate chips. You just put it all together and stick it in the pan and tada! Cake!


I looked on the internet to find out what people say about using pudding mix that isn’t instant. I found most people said it could be done, just substitute the water for milk. Although there is no fresh milk on this side of the island, I do have instant which I made.


I didn’t have beaters and it took forever to get all the lumps out of the cake. I was going to use the blender but decided it would be much too messy, although it would have been easier to pour the batter into the cake pans. That made me think twice about it, but I then decided that adding the chocolate chips without blending it would make it really complicated. So, it took about 40 minutes of mixing the stuff together. I was alright with this because after all, I wanted this to be nice for Brenda!


I carefully scooped the batter into four of the pans which fit perfectly in the toaster oven. I turned it on and waited. I peeked a few minutes into it and they were looking good. Then just before they were done I was horrified. The cute little bundt cakes were turning into huge chocolate cake balls! They weren’t perfectly round balls, but balls that looked like they were deflated on one side. After inspecting it I think the custard might have congealed together and tried to escape the other parts of the batter making these cakes into horrible cake balls.


I quickly took them out of the oven and thought maybe they would flatten as they cool. You know, like cookies do sometimes? Well, these didn’t. I had four misshaped cake balls sitting on my counter. What could I do? Brenda would be leaving in the next hour and I wanted to give her a nice gift that I made with my own hands. . . not these chocolate misshaped cake balls.





The cake balls needed to cool, but recently I’ve had another army of ants coming through my house because I forgot to change the ant poison hotels that sit on my kitchen floor. So I got a dish, a bowl and a plate. I set the bowl upside down inside the dish and the plate on the bowl. I put water in the dish and set the balls on top of the plate. Unless these ants learn to swim they won’t be eating Brenda’s Chocolate Cake Balls anytime soon.


While they were cooling, I spent a lot of time going over my options. I could give them all to the kids in the neighborhood. They will eat anything. I could give some to Mrs. Nichols. She is so old she wouldn’t know the difference. There was only one more option. I cut the bottom off the balls and turned them right side up and put powdered sugar on them. Now they looked like the cute little bundt cakes that they were meant to be.


I now had a dilemma. What should I do with the bottoms? The only thing to do was eat them. They tasted pretty good, but I realized that the custard must have mixed really well with the sour cream and chocolate chips leaving the other part of the cake tasting different. After eating all the bottoms I realized I had just eaten half a cake and wasn’t feeling really good.


I cut open one of the cute little cakes to see if it tasted good enough to give to Brenda. But, by now I couldn’t really tell when I tried a top if the bottoms tasted better. I’d eaten so much cake it all tasted the same. So I chose the best looking cake and wrapped it up in a clear baggie and proudly walked down to the Village Council. I handed the cake to a smiling Brenda. I wonder if she was smiling when she ate it.


If anyone wants the recipe for cake balls just let me know. One recipe makes ten misshaped cake balls. I recommend that you invite some friends over to help you eat the bottoms.