Christmas cake balls an easy holiday treat

One of the Christmas traditions in our house is a typical one: making holiday cookies. Sometimes my grandma or my uncle come over to help us decorate Hungarian Spice Cookies, a recipe that has been in my family for generations. Or sometimes we invite friends to come help us make sugar cookies, or sometimes we go to their house. The more friends, the merrier.

But ever since my friend’s mom, Mrs. Boston, made cake balls for us — I think it was two years ago around Christmas — I’ve wanted to add them to our cookie-making tradition.

Cake balls are pretty much just that — balls of cake dipped in chocolate. They’re soft inside and hard on the outside. I like them, partly because my friend Campbell and I call them Reindeer Turds.

All you need is cake mix and frosting and melted chocolate for dipping. They don’t take a lot of work; you don’t need measuring cups or a rolling pin or cookie cutters. You crumble warm cake into the frosting and roll the dough into balls with your hands. Chill them before you dip them into melted chocolate. You don’t want the balls too big or else they fall apart when you try to dip them. A good size is about 1½-inches around. You can leave them looking like, well, brown reindeer droppings, or decorate them with holiday sprinkles.

A word from Mom: A drawback of being a restaurant critic is that I get wrapped up in what the hottest pastry chefs around town are showcasing on their menus and I can lose track of what moms down the block are baking for their bunco parties and holiday open houses. That’s how cake balls escaped my notice for so long.

They’re ingeniously simple to make (I’ve seen more complicated recipes online and wondered why?) and incredibly versatile. Mix and match your favorite boxed cake mix, tub of frosting and candy coatings to create an array of flavors for the holidays and beyond.

Hmm ... if we used vanilla cake, cream cheese frosting and white almond bark could we call them Snow Balls?