As most of you readers have probably gathered, I love the traditional flavors that permeate the holiday season: vanilla, chocolate, apple, cinnamon, pumpkin…. Yum!  The form that these flavors are presented to the eater, though, is up for negotiation!  I love recipes that twist standard (read: boring) recipes into something new and exciting.  Just last week, I experimented with two different recipes of this type.  One of these recipes was a delicious success; the other was an epic failure.  Epic failures are more fun informative, so let’s start with that one first!

While perusing food blogs, I ran into a recipe for red velvet cake balls; actually, I ran into the recipe twice.  I figured that finding the same recipe twice in a matter of minutes was a sign from the kitchen deities that I should make these amazing looking little treats.  Since I was going to be traveling to my parents’ place to meet the whole family for Thanksgiving, I had a great excuse to give these a try!  So now I had a recipe and a purpose and it was time to implement!

The first part of it went as planned.  Once I had mixed the crumbled red velvet cake and the cream cheese frosting together, it was time to ball them and dip them in the chocolate.  This part did not go as planned, unfortunately. The next step was to melt the chocolate and I decided that doing this in the microwave was the easy way to go.  A pitted Tupperware and several burnt chocolate bars later, I learned the valuable lesson that the chocolate may actually be melted, but it will still retain its shape until you stir it.  Oops. Strike One.

A quick run to the grocery store to grab some more chocolate and I was back in business!  Now that I was able to melt the chocolate without burning a hole in the container, the next step was to drop small round balls (created by using my handy mini ice cream scoop!) into the chocolate, roll them around and then lay them onto waxed paper.  I ran into another problem here.  Candy chocolate is great, until any moisture gets in it.  Once moisture DOES get in, the consistency of the melted chocolate changes and becomes crumbly and nearly impossible to work with.  Remember, we just mixed an entire can of cream cheese frosting into the cake balls…moisture is guaranteed at this point.  Strike Two.

After recruiting my reluctant always-willing husband, we came up with a new plan: he would spoon some melted chocolate onto the wax paper, I would drop a rounded scoopful of the cake mixture onto it, then he would drizzle more chocolate on top, until the dollop was completely covered.  Genius, yes?  Well, except for the fact that doing it this way uses up the melted chocolate much quicker and we had to run again to the store.  Strike Three.

After we bought every single one of the semi-sweet baking chocolate bars and packages off the shelf, we went to work.  We spooned, scooped and smothered those little chocolate balls for the next hour and a half, dirtying nearly every dish in the kitchen, even this little fish-shaped appetizer bowl.

In the end though, they were done.  They were not the artful little Valentine’s-worthy showplace pieces that were so beautifully shown on the website.  In fact, they were more like amorphous blobs.  However, they tasted phenomenal!! Seriously, you have to try them — just get someone else to make them, maybe??

Given that they were not the most attractive looking, I was a little hesitant to bring those as my Thanksgiving contribution.  I settled for sending the red velvet cake balls into work with my husband, where I received way more praise than deserved.  While the compliments were nice, I still needed to create something to bring to Thanksgiving with me.  That’s when I discovered this recipe on another blog.

Apple cake.  Even the name is mouthwatering!  The recipe, written by someone known only as “Great Aunt Ethel,” was simple and direct (far from the maddening battle with red velvet cake balls), with no melting chocolate required! Excellent!

I thought to myself, “How could anything created by Great Aunt Ethel not be perfect?” and decided to give it a shot.  I followed the open recipe, using Granny Smith apples and also adding cinnamon, just a hint of nutmeg and the tiniest suggestion of cloves.  It was as easy as it sounded and the end product was beautiful, with all the flavors of apple pie but the texture of the moistest cake you’ve ever had. Even though the cake got slightly smushed in transport, my family loved it and gobbled it down quickly.  The praise for this one goes to 17 and baking and, of course, Great Aunt Ethel, but this recipe is definitely going into my files to use whenever an old classic needs a facelift. I’ll also ask the Rodelle Kitchen to give it a try…maybe they can think of one more simple step or ingredient to add that will make this already superb and homey recipe simply stellar!  Or, maybe you know what (if anything!) it is missing!  Try it out and let me know what you think!

Have you had any disasters or unbelievable successes re-imagining classic dishes?

Happy Baking!

Laura