Christmas Eve!

Every year my husband's family has a Christmas Eve party.  This is a big deal, because there are 16 adults and 35 children in his family!  I almost always host it, because I am nuts that way, and actually enjoy making food and entertaining large amounts of people, but since I had just had surgery, my sister in law said she would do it this year.  I still made the cake, though, and a turkey as well!  For the cake, I polled some of the family members and they requested a coconut cake.  I made the cake in two sheet pans and then cut squares of 1 inch decreasing size.  I coated the outside in shredded coconut mixed with some festive holiday sprinkles, and topped it with some stars I made out of sugar paste.  It was very Christmas-y and delicious too!

I ended up with extra cake, frosting, and coconut/sprinkles, so I made cake balls for the first time.  "Bakerella," the original inventor of cake balls, makes hers by mixing cake scraps with frosting until it makes a sort of dough.  Then you form it into balls, dip it into dipping chocolate, and decorate it however you want.  I dipped mine into guittard premium white chocolate, and then rolled them into the coconut/sprinkles.  After the chocolate set up, they were just like an amazing coconut truffle!  The texture of the center was unbelievable, and the flavor was so good - I have to admit, I think these may be even better than the cake itself!