Coconut Rum Balls - a Tipsy Recipe

I love cooking and baking at Christmas time, when it is somewhat socially acceptable to pour liquor into just about every single dish I make.  For some reason, if you use a half gallon of rum to cook with in April you're called an alcoholic, but in December you're just called festive.

I also really love coconut candy but I seldom make it, mostly because I have never had a really great recipe.

Well, before now anyway.

Printable Recipe

WHAT YOU NEED:

1 (12 oz) package of vanilla wafers

1 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut

1 cup pecans 

1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup rum

1 cup powdered sugar

WHAT YOU DO:

Place the vanilla wafers and the pecans in the food processor or blender and pulse for a few seconds at a time until they form a coarse powder (think breadcrumbs, not flour).  Pour the crumbs into a large mixing bowl and add the coconut, sweetened condensed milk and rum and stir thoroughly.  It will be be a sticky mess.

Refrigerate it for several hours.

Roll the refrigerated dough into 1 inch balls and drop into the powdered sugar, one at a time, to coat.  

Store in a covered container for at least a day or two before serving.  Like many candies, these get better with age. 

Just like me, I guess.

Rumplemintz fudge. You're welcome.

In my quest to perfect liquor-laced candy and cookies, I felt compelled to include a Rumplemintz recipe.

I think this stuff is nasty to drink.  Like, I'd rather drink Goldschlager.  For real.

But it makes damn good fudge.

Give it a try - you'll see.

WHAT YOU NEED:
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 tsps Creme de Cacao or other chocolate liquor
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 tablespoon Rumplemintz
1 drop green food coloring, optional, but real cute :)


WHAT YOU DO:
Line an 8 inch square pan with waxed paper.

Melt the chocolate chips and 1 cup of the sweetened condensed milk in the microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring often.  After they are completely melted and smooth, stir in the Creme do Cacao.  Pour half the mixture in the wax-paper lined pan and reserve the other half at room temp.  Pop the pan in the freezer while you complete the next step.

In a separate bowl, melt the rest of the sweetened condensed milk and the while chocolate chips.  After in is smooth (it will be thicker than the chocolate mixture) stir in the Rumplemintz and the green food coloring.

Remove the chocolate layer from the freezer and spread this layer on top.

Chill that for a few minutes, until firm, then spread the rest of the chocolate mixture on top.

Put in the fridge for several hours before cutting.

Yum.

Chocolate Covered Brandy Cherries. You know you want some.

If you saw my post yesterday with the recipe for Bourbon Balls, you may be thinking  that I only know how to make one basic kind of chocolate covered tipsy candy.  Not true.  So not true.  I'm just giving you the recipes that require a longer prep time first, because there are only so many days left between now and Christmas.  I'm nice like that.

I love chocolate covered cherries in all forms, shapes, and varieties.

They are good in my mouth.

I'll even eat the really bad ones that come from the Dollar Tree and are clearly of questionable origins, like maybe Alabama or somewhere. But these, these are the best.


[Printable Recipe]

WHAT YOU NEED:
1 jar of maraschino cherries (50-60ish) - with stems, without stems, I don't really care. They're easier to eat without stems but easier to dip in chocolate with stems. You're a grownup, you decide.
1 cup of your favorite brandy.  I used a cherry flavored brandy. If you don't have a favorite brandy, use rum. Or whiskey. Getting tipsy is the point here, not flavor...
3 tablespoons of softened butter
3 tablespoons of corn syrup
2 cups powdered sugar
16 oz. Bakers chocolate


WHAT YOU DO:

Open the cherries and dump out all the juice. Fill the jar with the brandy and put the lid back on.  Let the cherries soak in the brandy for a day or so.

After the cherries are nice and liquor-laden, drain them and dry them off completely. At this point, if I were really good, I would make up some sort of recipe to use the brandy.  I'm not that good, but you can drink that shit straight out of the jar if you want.  Yum.  Wanna know how I know?

Moving on...

Combine the butter and corn syrup until it's smooth. Add in the powdered sugar and knead it into dough. You will think that it won't happen, but it really will.  It will help if you use your hands instead of a spoon. The heat makes the dough come together.   Really, it's all scientific-y and stuff.

Take about a teaspoon of the dough and form it into a little disc.  Wrap it around the bottom of a cherry, and repeat 50-60 times.  If the dough gets sticky, pop it into the fridge for a few minutes.  After all the cherries are wrapped in dough, freeze them for an hour or so. While you're waiting, you can watch Oprah or something equally productive.

After an hour, melt the chocolate according to the directions on the package,  and dip each cherry in the chocolate. Allow them to dry.

Then wait.

And wait.

These are best after a week or two, but they are perfectly edible after a couple days.   They are not, however, all that great right away.

Trust me on this.

Enjoy.

Photo courtesy of Google Images, because guess who forgot to take a picture?  Again.  But mine looked just like that.  Mostly.

Bourbon Balls - Just the way God intended.

I've consumed a lot of Bourbon Balls in my lifetime.

I live in Kentucky, and it's like a rite of passage.  You know, Baby's First Bourbon Ball, and all that.

Many, many of the Bourbon Balls that I've eaten in my lifetime have been good.  Heck, some have even been great.  But as far as I'm concerned, there is only One Great True Bourbon Ball.

And today, as my gift to you, I'm willing to share it.

You're welcome.

WHAT YOU NEED:
2 shots of good Kentucky Bourbon - I like Maker's Mark myself, but there is other good stuff out there.
1 cup chopped walnuts - I like mine chopped sort of fine, but you can go with anything from halved on down to dust.
1/2 cup of butter, softened
4 1/2 - 5 cups powdered sugar
18 ounces baker's semi-sweet chocolate squares


WHAT YOU DO:
Put your walnuts into a sealable container with the bourbon, and allow it to soak AT LEAST 6-8 hours. Longer is fine, not so long, not fine.  If you plan it well, overnight is about perfect.

After the nuts have soaked, cream together your softened butter and 3 cups of the sugar.  Then dump in the nuts, excess juice and all.  Mix until well blended.  Slowly add in remaining sugar, stopping to check for consistency.  You are going for a pretty stiff dough - stiffer than cookie dough.  Keep adding sugar and mixing it until it's right.   And by right, I mean you can handle it without it all sticking to your hands.  But good news!  If it sticks to your hands, just lick it off and add more sugar.

Put the dough in the fridge for 15 minutes or so.

Form the dough into balls about the size of big marbles.  If you don't know how big that is, think Bing cherry-sized.  If you don't know how big that is, I'm not sure I can help you.  It's important to get the correct filling to chocolate ratio...

Yes, I'm a control freak.

Place the formed balls onto a wax paper lined pan, and freeze for at least 3-4 hours.  Longer is ok, too.  I know what you are thinking.  DO NOT skip this step.  Just trust me, ok?  I'm a trustworthy gal who has never led you astray before, right?  Right?

Melt the chocolate according to the package directions.  Or just throw it in the microwave for a minute or two, stirring frequently.  I don't ever mess with that whole "double-boiler" nonsense.  Take the frozen balls (ha, ha, I said frozen balls) and dip them in the chocolate.  Allow them to harden.

If you're not going to eat them right away, store them in the fridge.  Let them warm to room temp before eating.

Gettin' Tipsy.

I love to cook.

Baking, not so much.  There's all this measuring, and waiting, and measuring... Patient?  Not me.  Or at least that was the old me, the me of I-work-a-retail-job-and-it's-Christmas-and-dear-God-do-you-expect-me-to-feed-people-and-CELEBRATE-too?  But slowly, I'm becoming a whole new me...

A few years ago, I came up with the concept of Tipsy Cakes, which is basically a cake mix with a bunch of alcohol poured into the batter, and they were a huge hit with everyone I served them to.

Yes, I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition.

So anyway, when RJ asked me to make some cookies and candy for his co-workers this week, instead of heading to the ready to bake refrigerator section, I thought I might try to find some recipes that contained alcohol because everybody who works with RJ is a raving drunk because they had all enjoyed the Tipsy Cakes so much.  Also, I had seen this recipe for Fruitcake Cookies at the Pioneer Woman's blog, and I was itching for an excuse to try them.

Sadly, the Fruitcake cookies were a total and dismal flop.

Even sadlier, there were few other liquor-laced cookie and candy recipes to be found.

It's like people thing cookies and candy are for CHILDREN or something...

At this point, I did what I do best, and began to improvise.

I could make Tipsy Cookies, and Tipsy Candy, and Tipsy spaghetti, and Tipsy eggs, and...

The posts that will follow over the next few days will highlight the best of what I came up with.

Cheers!