Ok, I'm still new at alot of this stuff, so please bear with me.

So, I'm making some cake balls with liquor in them to take to my in laws for Thanksgiving. The actual cake part came out great.

I used red velvet cake with chocolate icing. They are supposed to be covered with white chocolate mixed with amaretto.

But the problem started with the amaretto. I melted the white chocolate in the microwave, then added the amaretto. But then it turned into a lumpy icing consistency.

Can someone PLZ help me?

First, is it possible to mix the liquor with the chocolate?
If it is, how do I do it?
Also, is there a way this messed up one can be salvaged or should I just take it as a loss and move on?

Ugh, it is so depressing when something screws up so badly.

As far as I know you can't add liquor to chocolate...it seizes and is not fixable. If you get flavored candy oils that is OK. You could add some amaretto to the icing to get that flavor into the cake balls.

HTH

Thank you sweetpea!

Well crap. I already made the cake balls. Would it work if I dipped them into the amaretto, let them sit out to soak for a minute, then dipped em in chocolate?

Any liquid will cause the chocolate to do what you describe
Candy Flavoring is the only way.
As for what is already messed up - you *might* be able to save it if you add enough new melted chocolate to it.

You can try adding some shortening and reheating it slowly, it may or may not work. When you mix chocolate with water it will "seize" and that's what happened to you. If you wanted amaretto flavouring then use the LorAnn oil or like sweetpea said try putting it in with the cake/icing combo.

HTH

I don't know if the liquid would soak into the balls once they're mixed with icing. If they do, make sure it is absorbed because if that mixes in with the chocolate when you dip you're going to have the same problem.

Good luck

Maybe you can put the liquor in a squirt bottle and spray the cake balls ... let them chill, then dip them in chocolate. I would be too scared to dip them in liquor ... they might get soggy and then un-usable.

Thank everyone SO much for your replies.

Did I mention my husband is awesome? lol. He googled it, and found out it can be done!

I guess I was supposed to add the amaretto in the chocolate and melt the chocolate with it in there, instead of adding it afterwards. Worked perfectly!

Thanks so much again for the help!!

Try grating the seized chocolate and slowly warm it up again.

Maybe you can take that melted candy, mix with cream cheese and powdered sugar and start making a "new" batch of frosting.....I just read that you found the answer....great!

Hi everybody!

I just wanted to thank you all again for helping me yesterday. I did get the amaretto to work in the chocolate, but I wasn't able to use it for the coating. The amaretto prevented the chocolate from completely hardening.

Oh well. I'm glad I learned something. I'll remember that next time, cuz it would be perfect for a binder!

A question about the chocolate though. I've seen people's cake balls on here and they are perfect. I've read different preferences on whether to have the cake balls frozen or room temp before coating them.

I tried both. At first I used toothpicks. When they were room temp, they fell apart. When they were frozen, the chocolate didn't sit right. I eventually just put em in the fridge, and used a steak knife to keep em stable for coating.

Does anyone else have a better method? I got the tops pretty smooth, but the bottoms aren't too pretty.

Oops! My apologies. I asked this before I went back to the forum and found someone else had already asked.

My computer sits on CC all day. So I gotta refresh the page to see new stuff.

Thanks again ladies!!

Actually what you made was an amaretto ganache. That's why it didn't set up.

Mike

Oh really? Wow, that's pretty cool. lol. I've read a lot here about people using it, but I never looked it up to see what it was or how to make it.

Thanks Mike!