Chocolate Boozy Balls

Hello there lovely people. Its 17:20 on a Wednesday and I am famished...That isn't saying anything grave as I am always famished. Anyway, I thought I'd start the evening by writing up a quick Christmas recipe. Yes, I know that it's more than half year past Christmas so you can imagine my surprise when I was looking through my photo album and I found photos after photos of these chocolate bonbons... Then I looked at all my blog posts since then and found that I hadn't uploaded this one yet! 

I call these bonbons my Chocolate Boozy Balls because they really pack a punch...or two! They are basically a jazzed up version of the chocolate rum balls that you would probably find at your local bakery store but prettier with more of an ahem.. adult taste. You could substitute rum with tequila or even whisky if you don't particularly like the taste of rum. If you don't drink alcohol, then you could use some flavour substitute but you won't really get the warmth that a Chocolate Boozy Ball will give you on a cold winter's day. 

Making this is quite simple. 

It starts with you baking a batch of brownies. For my brownie recipe, please click here.

Usually, after you bake a cake or a batch of brownies, you would let it cool uncovered. However I found that if you cover the cooked brownies and then let it cool, it traps in all that moisture-that would have been otherwise evaporated-which in turn makes for the most amazing gooey, sticky brownies. This stickiness, according to me, is an essential part of this recipe. You may need to leave it overnight for it to cool down completely. 

Following this, crumple all of your brownies into a bowl and drizzle some rum in it. The amount really depends on how strong you want your Boozy Balls to taste. I usually put a couple of tablespoons of rum in as I like them quite strong. 

Following this, mash the brownies and rum mixture together till the rum coats every morsel of the crumpled brownies. 

Mr. Old Monk looking down at the mashed Brownies!

Now, make ping pong size balls out of this and keep them aside.

Melt 120 grams of dark, good quality chocolate with 60 grams of double cream in the microwave at 20 second intervals. Chocolate burns easily, so every 20 seconds, take the cream and chocolate mixture out of the microwave and give it a stir. Continue heating the mixture in the microwave till all the chocolate has melted into the cream. Mix a tablespoon of rum in the chocolate mixture. 

While the chocolate mixture is still warm, drop the chocolate balls into the molten chocolate, coating the surface of the chocolate balls. 

Finally, place your ready chocolate boozy balls on a sheet pan or any container, in one layer. Let it stand this way for 5 minutes, following which, put the sheet pan into the freezer till the outer layer of chocolate has set. Wrap each Chocolate Boozy Ball with cling film and you are done.

In my experience, these Chocolate Boozy balls do not harden fully in the freezer so all you need to do is to take them out just 5 minutes before you want to serve them (just to take the frosty edge out). These treats last about 2 weeks in the fridge, although I can't be sure. Mine get over in a few hours. 

Cheerios!