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It’s wonderful to prepare a sweet treat occasionally that isn’t a cookie. Introducing these little spheres of heavenly perfection fashioned with fruit cake, cashews, and cocoa powder. They are relatively simple to create and resemble truffles. These truffle-like confectionery cakes are flavoured with chocolate and rum. They are about the size of a golf ball and frequently coated and dusted with cocoa, desiccated coconut, or chocolate sprinkles. This dessert indeed, as their name suggests, contains rum. The flavour and kick of alcohol are retained during preparation since they are not baked. This dessert is popular during the holiday season, especially during the Christmas and New Year.
Picture credits: Instagram - @foodoris_
Rum balls were invented by Danish bakers, who were concerned at the end of each day when they discovered unsold pastries at the counter. Even though they did their best to make the right amount of bread, buns, Danish pastry and cakes so that all of it would be sold during the day. They always had leftovers which would not be fresh enough to be sold the day after.
The bakers came up with a clever plan where they assembled all the Danish pastry and cakes, which were not sold during the day. They then mixed it all together with cocoa powder and some rum. The sticky dough was then rolled into balls, decorated with coconut flakes or chocolate sprinkle and then sold the next day for a low price.
Ingredients:
- 160 gm Marie biscuits or plain wafers
- 320 gm fruitcake
- 60 gm cashew nuts
- 40 gm cocoa powder
- 120 gm corn syrup
- 120 gm dark rum
- 200 gm dark chocolate (for the frosting)
Method:
For the Rum Balls:
1. Crush and crumble the marie biscuits (or wafers) and fruit cake in a mixing bowl until no large chunks remain and add the cocoa powder and mix everything together.
2. Pour in the dark rum and corn syrup and mix everything well using a fork.
3. Divide the mixture into 40 gram portions on a large tray that can fit in your fridge.
4. Chill the tray in the fridge for 30 minutes because the mixture is too sticky to form into balls right now.
5. After 30 minutes roll them into smooth balls and put them back in the fridge until needed.
For the frosting:
1. Liquify/melt the dark chocolate to a perfect satiny consistency.
2. Take the rum balls out of the fridge and dip one at a time into the melted chocolate and turn to coat using two forks.
3. Shake off the excess chocolate.
4. Once you finish coating all of the rum balls, let them set for 30 minutes.
5. Fill the leftover melted chocolate into a piping cone.
6. Pipe chocolate onto the rum balls in zigzag patterns.
7. Sprinkle cocoa powder on top (you can also use choco chips or other cake sprinkles)
