These are simple and good. And definitely alcoholic, in case that's an issue.
The original recipe is from my mother, from an old community cookbook she had. The cookbook is called Cookie Cookery, by the Sisterhood of Congregation Brith Shalom (Houston, TX), published in 1971. It's a small but very decent collection of recipes for cookies and other small goodies, of the sort that are served at receptions and other gatherings.
I remember my mother making batch after batch of sweets from this little booklet, wrapping and freezing them months before some Big Event was to take place. She and her friends would defrost and then prepare everything shortly before said big event -- trays and trays of beautiful cookies from her and from her friends. It was an interesting mix of baking traditions -- traditional Texas in all its multi-ethnic splendor and also the different waves of immigration, Jewish and non-Jewish, into the Houston area.
Anyway.
One of the recipes in there is for Bourbon Balls. I grew up eating these, often for holidays. My mother would use whatever booze she had on hand, whether bourbon or rum or something else, as long as the flavors are more or less compatible. They always turned out well. Most of the recipes I see online are a bit more complicated. These are simple but good.
The original recipe uses somewhat vague quantities such as "a box of powdered sugar". I have no idea what that means, so I make these to taste. Also, vanilla wafers came in 13 ounce boxes back then. These days the boxes are 11 ounces. I suspect that the vanilla wafers didn't use to be such a miracle of modern food science (the modern boxes list lots of additives to give the cookies their characteristic taste and texture), but eh, who knows, and they're simple to use.
The original recipe:
13 oz. box of vanilla wafers
2 cups chopped pecans
1 box (unknown size) powdered sugar
1 cup bourbon
Crush the wafers, mix everything, then roll in powdered sugar. (In other words, basically the method I write out below, except that I'm not sure food processors were a Thing back then.) Makes 80 bourbon balls.
My version of Bourbon Balls (or Rum Balls):
1 box Vanilla wafers (currently the boxes are 11 oz, which works fine. I used the Safeway generic brand because the ingredient list wasn't as horrifying as the Kroger generic brand or the actual Vanilla Wafer brand. I'm pretty sure that any kind of cookie is going to work, honestly. And precise quantities aren't important)
2 cups chopped pecans, give or take a bit
about 1 to 1.5 cups powdered sugar (to taste; I'm using somewhat more than 1 cup these days but the actual quantity is not too important)
about 3/4 cups rum or bourbon (give or take a bit. I used Bacardi gold because that's what I have on hand, its flavor is reasonable, and 3/4 cup was sufficient to give it a good scooping texture.)
Crush the vanilla wafers (I used a food processor). You should end up with roughly 3 cups of crushed cookies, give or take a bit. Chop the pecans finer if you want them finer, and add them to the crushed cookies. Mix the crushed cookies and pecans with the powdered sugar. Then add enough booze to get the dry ingredients to hold together. It'll start out a bit wetter but will get a little drier as the booze soaks into the dry ingredients.
Take little blobs of the dough and roll them in powdered sugar.
That's it. Eat them up, yum.
They store pretty well at room temp or in the refrigerator, and they can be frozen, too. The number of rum balls you get from this obviously depends on the size of the balls you roll. But it should be at least a few dozen.
I can think of variations with added cocoa/chocolate, spices, different types of booze, different nuts or maybe some dried fruit, and so on. One of these days I'll make my own cookies for these instead of using store-bought vanilla wafers. My guess is that a regular sugar cookie or shortbread would work great. It's probably a good recipe for any kind of old/crisp/stale cookie. The cookies lose all integrity and just become a nice flavorful mush to soak up the booze and sugar and hold the nuts in place.
