Chocolate Cake Ball Truffles

After making the Pumpkin Spice Truffles, I knew more cake balls would be in my future. I especially wanted to try another kind because one of my kids isn't a fan of pumpkin. Chocolate was an easy choice. I hoped that I could make a healthier version of cake and use low fat cream cheese instead of frosting again. It was a great success and my nine year old daughter enjoyed helping out too.

First the cake: I used a super moist Devil's Food Cake mix and instead of the recommended additions, I added a 6oz container of plain Greek Yogurt, one egg white, and a cooled cup of decaf coffee. It baked 30 minutes in a 9x13" glass dish sprayed with Pam. 

After baking, I made some cuts and allowed it to cool. 

The next step was to crumble the cake up (removing the more baked edges) and combine with low fat cream cheese (Neufchatel Cheese).  Many people recommend combining using clean hands. I removed my rings and used my hands too. It is pretty easy to work the cream cheese into the crumbled cake.  The combination becomes a dough.

In trying this again, I used only 2/3's of the 8 oz package of Neufchatel Cheese and it seemed better.*

We then rolled the dough into balls and then chilled the balls in the freezer for about 20 minutes. With our 1.5" balls, we got 45 balls. 

The milk chocolate flavored melts melted very nicely in my Chocolate Pro melting pot and dipping went well. I used a fork along with a fondue fork.  A few did crack due to the temperature difference of the warm chocolate and the cold balls.  For the second sheet, we just left them out a bit longer and didn't have cracking issue

For decoration, I used dark chocolate and drizzled back and forth with a fork. 

Here is the nutritional information for one cake ball and 3 candy wafers which I estimate for each ball.

A lower fat and calorie coating might be a nicer option or using real chocolate.  Here is the nutritional label for one cake ball with the candy wafer coating.

*Using less Neufchatel Cheese reduces each cake ball to 89 calories and 3.4 grams of total fat.