Bourbon Balls - A Damn Good Recipe

Inspired by our recent trip to Kentucky, we craft our own version of bourbon balls that would capture our particular preference of bourbon - chocolate - pecan goodness. Bourbon balls can actually range anywhere from $1-$1.50 a piece if you buy them while touring the Bourbon Trail. They are delicious but not always readily available in your area. Not to mention that buying some of those gift boxed chocolates will lead to continual cravings.

We opted to keep our recipe as simple as possible and went with the cream-filling center as opposed to the rolled up ball of cookie crumbs, pecans, bourbon, and sugar. This variety takes more effort to make, but it definitely worth it if you like chocolate coated creamy fillings.

Tools:

Food Processer

Mixing Bowl

Hand Mixer

Plastic Wrap

Rounded Teaspoon

Small Canning Jar (Optional -- Double Boiler)

Wood Skewers

Cookie Sheets Covered with Wax Paper

Some Patience

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter, softened

3.5 cups powdered sugar

.5 tsp vanilla extract (you could opt for artificial because this stuff is expensive)

1/3 cup bourbon (we used Wild Turkey 101)

1 lb pecan halves (you crush and pulverize some in the food processor)

24 oz. of chocolate chips (this should be easy to melt chocolate)

This recipe is worked in several steps and will require frequent use of the microwave and freezer to develop the delicious confections.

Step #1: Dump some pecans into a food processor and generate about 1/2 cup crushed/pulverized pecans. The texture of the mixture should be like a super coarse corn meal. Freeze any extra for a later round of goodness.

Step #2: In the mixing bowl, toss the butter, 1/2 of the powdered sugar, and vanilla extract together. Then use the hand mixer to blend until a creamy consistency. Then slowly add the remaining powdered sugar and 1/2 cup crushed pecans. Blend until smooth and then cover with plastic wrap. Place in freezer for 20 minutes.

Step #3: Use rounded teaspoon to scoop and ball cream filling. Place rounded balls on parchment cover cookie sheet. Freeze for 30 minutes.

Step #4: Melt chocolate. We used a small canning jar to melt the chocolate. We would heat for 30 seconds and stir - repeating this process several times. You could also opt to use a double boiler if you had one.

Step #5: Time to dip them creamy balls! Using a skewer, stab a frozen cream ball and quickly dip in the chocolate until completely covered. To prevent chocolate on your fingers, use a secondary skewer to plop the ball onto a parchment covered sheet. Immediately place a pecan halve on top. (Tip: Two people make this process easy. One to dip and one to place the pecan on top.) Freeze the dipped balls as soon as possible for 30-40 minutes. Rotating between two sheet pans will help. Failure to quickly freeze will result in some "sluffing" of chocolate towards the bottom (as seen in the pictures).

Step #6: Try to control yourself eating them. In full disclosure, we opted to divide our dipping session two weeks apart. We kept half of the cream balls in the freezer and only made half of our goodies the first time around. This kept the pecan toppers tasting fresh as we pigged out on 'em. Happy eating!