Rum Balls

(Photo: Merlot)

 

 

 

This year, I made a lot of homemade baked gifts. Rum balls (first time I've ever made them) were by far my favorite treat and evidently, everyone else's because I got a lot of requests for the recipe. The extra nice thing about rum balls ... they require no baking!

 

When I went looking for a recipe, I found that Aunt Lee has a recipe for rum balls in her church recipe book and there is another recipe in our church recipe book .... both are very similar. The recipe below is a combination of the two after my experience(s) making them - yes, I made more than one batch!

 

Ingredients (see Cook's Notes for options):

• 1 cup very fine vanilla wafer crumbs
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans
• 2 Tablespoons Dutch Cocoa (Hershey's works fine)
• 1-1/2 Tablespoons light corn syrup (Karo)
• 1/4 cup rum (I personally like the dark rum)

 

Directions:

1. Crush vanilla wafers very fine - I used a blender to get a very fine crumb.
2. Chop nuts very fine - again, I used a blender to get them quite fine.
3. Mix together all the dry ingredients (cookie crumbs, nuts, powdered sugar, cocoa) and make sure you have them well-combined before you add the wet ingredients.
4. Add corn syrup and rum and mix until all the dry ingredients are incorporated with the wet.
5. Roll the mixture into small balls (about a rounded teaspoon per ball - marble size) in the palm of your hands. If the mixture is too sticky to form a nice ball or is really sticking to your hands, just add more crumbs.
6. Roll the balls in powdered sugar.

Makes about 3 dozen rum balls.

 

Rum balls freeze beautifully and because of the liquor in them, they never get rock hard so you can pull them out of the freezer and serve (or snack!) immediately.

 

Cook's Notes:

This is a very versatile recipe and you can vary ingredients and combinations of ingredients to suit your own taste ..... some options are below:

• Crumbs: vanilla wafers, ginger snaps (my favorite), or chocolate wafers (leave out cocoa if using chocolate wafers)
• Nuts: pecans (my favorite), walnuts, almonds, or any other nuts you like
• Liquor: rum, or you could use bourbon/whiskey, even a liqueur you like (just a thought .... perhaps Almond Amaretto combined with almond nuts? Yum!)
• Coating: powdered sugar (more or less the 'standard') or chopped nuts instead or sugar, or cocoa.

 

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