rum balls

Time to start the annual rum ball fest. First, finely crush some vanilla wafers. (Nilla wafers taste the best.) Here we have 9 1/2 lbs of cookies. It's a good start. I may need more.





I use a hand-cranked meat grinder to crush my cookies. A day care center full of two year olds have enough energy to accomplish the task as well, but think of the germs!!

Add corn syrup, sugar, melted chocolate chips and rum. I made three batches, using regular rum, cherry rum, and (with white chocolate chips,) some vanilla spice rum. You can also use bourbon, or any flavored liquor of your choice. Think Grand Marnier, Amoretto, cherry kirch, Creme de Menth . . . What flavor do you like with chocolate?

When the resulting mush has cooled enough to handle, roll it into little balls and stash them in an air-tight tin to ripen.(I put a sheet of tinfoil between layers to keep those little yummies from settling together.) They really do need to ripen a few weeks to get that full flavor. Come christmas gifting time, I dole them out in labled sandwich baggies and pack them in tins I have collected at garage sales all year long. Then I hit the post office and away it all goes!

Candy hates it, because while I'm transforming that 91/2 lbs of wafers into Christmas cookies, my lap is not available to her. So when the lap does become available, she claims it, but punishes me by ignoring me.

Squirrel on the other hand, has her safe shelf for when we let her out to socialize, and she loves so just sprawl and snooze.

Sometimes, she rolls right off the shelf and onto DH's shoulder. Look at those dear little white feeties. Life is good when you're small and fluffy.