Ball Week! - Day 1: Bourbon Balls

Welcome to I'll Bake It, You Eat It Ball Week!  This has nothing to do with sports, galas, or... those.  It has to do with little round treats and lots of them!!  I'm so excited about this week that I'm squeaking over here.  Can you hear me?  I love themes.

I have a dear friend who is getting married in a couple of months and she has asked me to do a dessert station at her wedding reception.  This friend is the Queen of cake balls!  She's been making them for years and all of our friends are obsessed with them.  So, in honor of the Ball Queen (I'm pretty sure she and her future husband would not approve of this title), we decided that the items on the dessert station should be all kinds of balls.

Last night we had some friends over and tasted eight different kinds of balls so that my friend and her fiance could select the ones they want to serve at the wedding.  It was fun night that ended with a serious sugar high and a final decision about what their guests will be enjoying on the big day.

All week I will be talking about the different treats we tasted last night, but the first was CA's favorite... the bourbon ball (I know you're surprised).

This bourbon ball was a little different from the others I've had in the past.  I happily tasted a lot of bourbon balls a couple of years ago when we made our rounds on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  Most were a mixture of butter, powdered sugar and bourbon rolled into a ball, topped with a pecan half and dipped in chocolate.  They were very delicious, but so many of the ball options I was making for the tasting were dipped in chocolate, that I thought it would be nice to have something a little different to mix it up.

This base of this version is ground up vanilla wafers and pecans mixed with powdered sugar, corn syrup, bourbon and melted chocolate.

All those ingredients get mixed together and rolled into a ball that is then rolled in granulated sugar.  The sugar is a nice aesthetic touch because it makes the ball almost sparkly on the outside.

You should be warned that these balls have a LOT of bourbon flavor.  While CA loved them, most of the other tasters thought they were too bourbony for mass consumption.  However, if you're a bourbon lover, this is the ball for you.

We deduced that the reason the bourbon flavor is so strong is that the it is not cooked at all so every bit of the alcohol stays in the ball.

To make these bourbon balls, I followed this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker.  I think it's a great one and will keep it in my repertoir even though it will not be served at the upcoming wedding.

Thanks for tuning in to Day 1 of Ball Week.  We've got 7 more balls to go... balls, balls, balls.

Julie

(Please note that the word "ball" is used 25 times in this post)