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Low Carb Cake Balls


Oh, for Pete’s sake. I was talking on the phone and accidentally hit “send” before I was ready to publish. That’s what happens when I talk to my sweet babboo and he speaks to me of things like rain. I get all happy, and then I hit “publish”.
Aside from that, today’s dessert is coming to you as actually Wednesday’s dessert, because I meant to publish this tomorrow. So if you’re seeing this today, pretend you’re seeing this tomorrow and saying to yourself Wowie Kazinga! Your Lighter Side is terrific posting things a few days in a row.
Better yet, if you love what I’m doing, I’d appreciate your vote here for my cauliflower tots at chowstalker, or The Lighter Side of Low Carb here at Babble.com (what do you mean Pioneer Woman is beating me? Mine is one of the recipes on her site! Pfft.). And if, after all of that, you have some energy left, please like our Facebook page and share it with your friends. That’s where the day to day conversations are happening that keep me from getting too much done around the house. *ahem*
Anyway, on to the food! Yay! And, as you can see by the image above, today we’re making cake balls. Some of you will want to kick me in my no no with your 8″ paleo pumps because I’m using pre-packaged low carb goods to concoct this recipe. Rest assured I have another one coming, but I didn’t want to delay the effort with a first run, and it was the best way to enjoy the cakes I made.
Both cakes are the love children of Hold the Carbs pre-packaged, low carb cake and frosting mixes (don’t laugh at Glen–I did this all by myself), and so this will be the world’s longest post, combining both a recipe and three reviews to touch on the two pre-packaged cake mixes and the frosting mix I used today.
So, without further talkies, first the recipe:
Great Balls o’ Cake
4 low carb cupcakes, prepared per package instructions, still warm
1 cup low carb frosting, prepared per package instructions, softened
My ganache recipe
Crumble the cupcakes into a mixing bowl. Add frosting and mix. Roll into 12 balls about the size of walnuts and let chill on parchment paper for a couple of hours or until hardened.
Prepare either of my ganache recipes at this link (it’ll be based on which ingredients you happen to have at the time). Dip the cake balls, sprinkle with bacon, almonds, or coconut, and let cool/harden again on parchment in the refrigerator. Serve chilled and keep cold.
Makes 12 covered balls o’ cake. Note: I saved out a bit of the frosting to drizzle over the chocolate later and it looked pretty sweet!
Nutritional Information: About 1.5 net carbs per ball using HoldtheCarbs.com mixes, but your products will vary.
Now for the reviews of the mixes themselves:
I prepared both the LC-Yellow Cake Mix and the LC-Chocolate Cake mix per package instructions (you saw the results up there in images). It’s pretty wonderful having low carb cake mixes, after all, so I made both for comparison. My cakes came out pretty dense, which could be partially due to our elevation here in Denver, but I liken the cakes to a pound cake, since they’re really substantial. Each package makes a 9″ cake, but trust me when I tell you these cakes are so dense, a double layer might just be too much. You’d likely best make a two layer from one single layer cake. It is for this reason I made the yellow cake into a few cupcakes for experimentation and a small angel food cake, and the chocolate into small 4″ cakes and a few cupcakes.I went ahead and used the cupcakes to make the cake balls, and I used some chocolate and some vanilla crumbs mixed together with the LC-Vanilla frosting for the cake balls.
The chocolate cake I played with as a Halloween theme, hence the dorky looking outcome (I swear I wasn’t smoking crack).
Here is where I want to invoke the amazing Frosting mix Glen at HoldtheCarbs has concocted, because while the cakes didn’t zip my bip necessarily, the LC-Vanilla Frosting Mix  was a definite bip-zipper. I used the frosting to both make the little balls o cake and for the orange frosting layer under my chocolate ganache.
It should go to say I wanted my little Halloween cake to look more like this:

OK. So let’s be real here. It looks like a sad little Munchkin gave up on life and jumped to his Oompa Loompah death rather than eat the sad little cake. Ah well… alas poor orange little friend… Snookie might like it, though!

Long story short, I love the frosting, but the cakes weren’t the light, fluffy concoctions of airy delight  I was expecting. Plus, the pictures show I was having a moment. Still, I was able to make lemons out of lemonade…or, rather, Balls o’ Cake out of my sad looking dessert attempts.

The Frosting is easy to work with and tastes tremendous, but be sure to be patient when working with it. It will seem thin at first, but it thickens up due to the gums in the mix. Whatever you do, don’t panic and dump a bunch of low carb confectionery in there and end up with masonry spackle. Don’t ask me how I know that. I’ll never tell!

Long story longer: I loved the vanilla cake mix if you think of it as a pound cake. The chocolate cake mix was beautiful, but a wee bit dense for me, and the frosting? Ooh la la! Whether heated and poured as a glaze, or tinted and hugging your dessert, Glen could do no wrong with that frosting.

LC-Yellow Cake Mix
Rating: ♥♥♥
Price:  $7.99 for 9 oz package
Usefulness: Making pound cakes and cake balls
Negative: Very dense cake, contains some wheat proteins and starches
Found: online
Website: HoldTheCarbs.com

LC -Chocolate Cake Mix
Rating: ♥♥
Price:  $7.99 for 9 oz package
Usefulness: Making pound cakes and cake balls
Negative: Very dense cake, contains some wheat proteins and starches
Found: online
Website: HoldTheCarbs.com

LC-Vanilla Frosting Mix
Rating: ♥♥♥♥
Price:  $7.99 for 8 oz package
Usefulness: Frosting your buns off, along with cakes, cupcakes, you name it
Negative: Sucralose along with stevia, but it works
Found: online
Website: HoldTheCarbs.com

Disclosure: These products were provided free of charge for review by a site sponsor, but has not affected the results. 

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Comments

  2. It's one of those embarrassing moments when the blog owner hits "publish" instead of "save"… *sigh* The post is there now! Sorry for the confusion…and lack of text.

    Reply

  3. i'm so excited about this post. i can't even tell you. i just ordered chocolate cake mix, yellow cake mix, choc frosting, vanilla frosting, and brownie mix.

    but no pics of the cake balls?

    Reply

  4. omg i just scrolled back up to the top and saw the pic. duh!! please disregard.

    but while i have you here, how did you do the white covered cake balls? i only saw a ganache recipe using chocolate.

    Reply

  5. Your cakes look good to me so there! After all it is CAKE! I'll have to go to the website now and really think about getting some. I like how you made the cake balls out of the mix.

    Reply

  6. Hi, Meli! The white is the frosting that was left over from frosting the other cake, so I heated that and drizzled it over the ganache. It was really nice. Thanks for asking! 🙂

    LynnMarie, thank you! I want to make cake balls this next time out of a non-mix, from just a low carb cake, so we'll see how that goes!

    Reply

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