Learning not to fear the art of Cake Ball

Out on the interwebs are millions gorgeously perfect balls of cake and icing, coated ever-so smoothly in chocolate and topped with some smashingly beautiful decor. Like much in the online world, they are eye candy but not real life, at least for my skill set.

But who cares what they look like if you know they'll taste heavenly? Not me.

If you decide to take on the project, I do highly recommend inviting a friend over and timing it so you are mid-cake ball process when said friend arrives, especially if you decide to go the 100 percent purist from-scratch cake and icing route like yours truly the baking snob. That way you have extra hands to roll balls and then dip and decorate them. Plus, that means two heads to try to figure out how in the world you make chocolate dipping look semi-decent.

Also, apparently it takes a lot of red dye to make red velvet cake really red. If you look really hard, you'll see a tinge of red in the cake, but it was essentially chocolate cake (which is better anyway). Red sprinkles are a lot harder to not mess up, so they kept a little Valentine-y theme.

My sources this go-round: 
Awesome from-scratch Red Velvet Cake, Smitten Kitchen
Step-by-step Red Velvet Cake Ball instruction, Iowa Girl Eats