Yummy festive Pumpkin cake balls !

Hey blog, I thought I'd shock you by posting for the first time in about a year and a half! What up! Exciting things are happening in my world. Beyond getting engaged and married since my last post, my friends are starting to pop out babies (on purpose)! You know what that means... time to take a familiar recipe and turn it into a fun and fabulous treat to celebrate a baby milestone! My friend Sarah, who was my college roommate and is now my coworker as well as daily lunchmate and comrade, just found out yesterday that her adorable 20-week-old bump contains a little GIRL! And, since the day after tomorrow marks the first day of fall (okay, it's still a TAD early), I thought, what could be better than a pumpkin dessert to say, IT'S A GIRL!!

So I got this weight watchers recipe for pumpkin muffins a couple years ago from my roommate at the time and it is the easiest, most delicious and crowd pleasing recipe, I swear. It comes out every fall and wins new fans. Here's that recipe:

1 box cake mix (yellow or spice)
1 15-oz can pumpkin
1 cup water
1 bag cinnamon chips

Combine ingredients. Divide into 24 muffin cups and bake at 350F for 22 minutes. Each muffin is 150 calories.

DEEEELISH and I promise everyone who has ever tried one of these will become obsessed!

So, I was feeling ambitious yesterday and I decided to adapt this pumpkin muffin recipe into pumpkin cake balls!! Kroger was, of course, out of canned pumpkin but they did have some canned pumpkin pie mix (with the extra sugar, spices and preservatives added) so I worked with that.

I picked out a "golden butter recipe" cake mix (one of these days my goal is to figure out this recipe without the cake mix so it doesn't have all the corn syrup, trans fat and preservatives... but, there's a limit to my ambition for one day!!).

So I made the cake in 2 9-inch round pans which cooked in about 30 minutes and made the apartment smell gloriously of pumpkin cake. This was just the cake mix, water and pumpkin. SO EASY!!

While the cake was baking I made the icing from scratch, using my Kitchenaid stand mixer. It's probably maybe the third time I've ever used it, which is sad! That thing is worth more than everything else I own combined and it does amazing things. One day I swear to use it to its full potential. The icing is:

1 stick butter (I use light butter)
8 oz cream cheese (I use the reduced fat kind)
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla

I added a little cinnamon too because who doesn't love cinnamon in her pumpkin dessert!

Then, give the cake maybe half an hour to cool so you don't burn yourself, and then toss the cake and icing into a bowl and mix and mash it up. It makes a mush, which is formed into balls. This recipe turned out extra mushy from all the icing, so it would probably be advised to throw it into the fridge or freezer (depending on how much time you have) so it's a little firmer for ball making.

Next come the cinnamon chips! Heat water in a double boiler and melt a bag of cinnamon chips along with a glug of vegetable oil (or, my friend Jessica adds wax to hers) to make it melt more smoothly. Roll the cake balls in the melted cinnamon goop until they're coated and set them on wax paper. Add more cinnamon chips as you run out; I used close to two bags for this recipe.

If you want to decorate them now is the time; I wrote "it's a girl!" in pink icing on mine, and did a couple different ones, with mini chocolate chips, sprinkles, and icing designs on them, but plain is totally good too. You can get so creative with cake balls, I love it!

Then keep them in the freezer and enjoy at any temperature! Personally I think these work best frozen or really cold.

They were a big hit in the office! YUMMM.... CONGRATULATIONS SARAH!!!! Can't wait to meet baby girl Kortz!!!