Bourbon Balls

For those of you who like a little (or maybe even a lot) of alcohol in your  Christmas confections, I have a delightful bourbon ball recipe to share!


Every year at Christmas time, a lady who lives in my parents' neighborhood has made them/us bourbon balls.  Her bourbon balls are delicious, and we always look forward to them! This year, since I am so far away and was not sure if I'd get to taste them, I asked my mom to get the recipe from her so I could try my hand at making them.  I got the recipe, and I made some myself.  I'll share what I did here and some changes I found that I'll need to make.


First of all, here's the recipe.

Bourbon Balls Recipe:

24 oz. of vanilla wafers- finely crushed till it is a powder consistency.

2 c. finely chopped pecans

4 heaping Tablespoons of Hershey’s cocoa

1 ½ cups honey

2/3 cup bourbon

Mix all ingredients together and roll into balls. Roll each ball in confectioner’s  sugar

Place in a covered container for 3 days in the refrigerator. Then enjoy!!

I chose to use Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon

This was actually one of the milder bourgeons.  I may be trying another kind the next time I make these.

1.)  24 oz. of vanilla wafers crushed to a powdery consistency.  I debated getting the food processor out for this, but decided against it as I really didn't feel like cleaning up my food processor just to get crushed vanilla wafers.  Instead, I got out a plastic Ziploc bag and manually crushed them.

I think I am going to use my food processor next time.  It probably took me just as long to do this as it would have been to get out the food processor and clean it out later.  I finished crushing them in the bowl.

2.) 2 cups finely chopped pecans...I just bought these already crushed up.  They were cheaper that way and the bag itself was exactly 2 cups!

3.) 4 heaping tablespoons of Hershey's cocoa.  I actually bought both kinds of cocoa but used the dark chocolate kind in this recipe because I prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate.

4.) 1 and 1/2 cups of honey.  I didn't take a picture of this.  This was a messy step. :) You need a big jar of honey for this! I'll be buying from Sam's Club next time.

5.) 2/3 cups of bourbon.  Next time I am scaling back on the bourbon.  I think I will try 1/3 cup instead of 2/3.  

Mix all ingredients together and it looks kind of like molasses with cookie crumbles and nuts in it.  It is a VERY sticky and messy substance.  So be prepared to get very messy when making it.  Thankfully, the little man was taking a nice long nap when I made these.

Then you roll them in confectioners sugar. I put it out on some parchment paper.  This also gets quite messy.  And, personally, I'd recommend rolling them into balls and refrigerating for a few hours.  Then, I'd get them back out and roll them in the confectioner's sugar.  It didn't hold well to them at first, but after being refrigerated, I tried it again and the sugar stuck better.

This is what mine looked like! I ended up making them big because I started out small and there was so much mixture I felt like it was taking way too long.  I layered them in a tin with parchment paper.

They turned out pretty good, but even after well over 3 days in the refrigerator, they were strong! I don't remember the ones I tried being this strong.  I followed the recipe closely. So,  even though I've mentioned things I'm going to try differently next time, here's a list of all of the things I'd rethink or try differently the next time I make them.

-When crushing wafers, use a food processor.

-Try a lighter bourbon or scale back

-The dark chocolate was good, but I want to see if it is much different with the other kind of cocoa

-Refrigerate balls and THEN roll them in the sugar

-Cut this recipe in half! It makes A LOT.  I'd only follow this recipe as is if I wanted to make bourbon balls for a lot of people (which may be why she had it that way as she made them for the neighborhood).

- Buy a very large jar of honey.  I had to use every last bit of my honey and then even use a little bit of a honey substitute.

All in all, though, they were good!