Rum Balls

Nope, these are NOT healthy. Not even close, unfortunately. But look how pretty! I couldn’t even tell you if they’re any good, because, believe it or not, I resisted and haven’t tasted them! I figured I had splurged more than enough on the cupcakes that I’d made over the week-end, I needn’t add to the decadence! (I’ll be posting that recipe soon, don’t worry!)

See, after the little “cupcakes falling off the fridge” incident, I figured I had to do something with the damaged ones. As you all know, I hate wasting food, even if it’s not the best kind of food. Rum balls were the obvious choice. They used to be one of my favourites, too!

Rum balls are a baker’s best kept secret. You see, they are the best way to use up all the cake crumbs and trimmings, misses and mistakes, day old cookies and cakes, or even cupcakes that have fallen off the fridge! All these things can even be kept in the freezer until you have enough to make a decent batch.

You don’t even need a recipe to make rum balls. The process is quite simple, really. Simply mix your “scraps” with a moist, binding ingredient, such as buttercream (any kind will do), or, if you don’t have any of that on hand, you could use condensed milk, ganache, caramel, jam, or any substance that’s sweet, sticky and gooey. Peanut butter? Why not! It would only contribute to making them a little bit healthier.

The trick is to combine everything together until you get a nice, stiff paste consistency. You could even add cocoa powder if you don’t find the dough to be chocolatey enough. Of course, you then need to add a little bit of rum: not so much that your mixture will become runny, but enough to get a good strong rum flavour.

Chill the mixture for a bit until it’s firm enough to be rolled into little ping pong size balls. Roll the balls in the coating of your choice. You could use chocolate sprinkles, multicolour confettis, ground nuts, grated coconut, cocoa powder, icing sugar, or even push your recycling efforts even further and use dried cookie crumbs, why not?

There was this bakery where I used to buy those awesome, cute little chocolate logs when I was a teenager. I found them to be quite the treat and would sometimes get way out of my way to go and buy a few! I found out later in life that they were in fact nothing more than rum ball dough coated in marzipan and dipped in chocolate at each end then drizzled with dark chocolate. Clever and elegant!

So anyway, now I have all these rum balls in my frigde and don’t know what to do with them…

Rum ball, anyone?