I had hoped to post this over the holidays but things just got to busy and some how I just did find time to get this rewritten and ready for all of you.
Photo of the bourbon Balls sold through the Makers Mark website
While visiting the Makers Mark distillery we were all given one of the best candies that I have ever eaten. They looked like this and we each where give one at the end of our tour. I longed to send these to some of my friends as gifts and maybe keep some for myself but I just could not afford to. As wonderful as these are I thought with a little effort and time I could find a recipe that was close to the fantastic candy we had on our trips to Kentucky and make them at a price that I could afford to send them to friends and family all across the country and introduce more people to the world of cooking with bourbon.
I found a recipe at the following website www.herkentucky.com and started with it and tweaked it a little to make the recipe even easier to make.
The day before you want to make the balls you should soak one cup of chopped pecans in 1/2 cup bourbon over night covered in the refrigerator. This is what you will need to make about 40 walnut sized candies.
- 1/2 cup of good quality bourbon, I like Makers Mark
- 1 cups chopped pecans
- 1 cup whole pecans
- 1 pounds of powered sugar
- 1 stick of real cream butter, softened
- 1 bag 16 oz. of dark chocolate chips …. I used Hershey’s Special Dark
- 1 half bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips.
walnut size bourbon balls before covering
- Place 1 cup chopped pecans into food processor and chop fine.
- Place fine chopped nuts into a bowl with 1/2 cup bourbon and let soak over night.
- Cream butter in large bowl, adding bourbon soaked pecans. Combine pecan, butter mixture with powdered sugar to form a stiff batter.You may need to add up to 1/2 cup water to thin mixture. Stiff enough to form a nice ball. Refrigerate to let stiffen the mixture about 2 hours or the freezer for 30 minutes.
- Roll dough into walnut size balls.
- Place on wax paper on cookie sheet and place in freezer for about 30 minutes.
- While balls are chilling place about 1/2 bag of dark chips and 1/4 bag semi sweet chips into a microwave safe bowl. The smaller the bowl the easier it is to dip the and coat the balls. Heat chocolate for about 2 minutes stirring at about 1 minutes to insure that the chocolate melts evenly.
- Using two teaspoons drop one ball at a time into chocolate and cover, use other spoon help let the extra chocolate drip back into the bowl. place on clean wax paper to cool. Add more chocolate as needed and warm when the chocolate gets to thick to smoothly cover balls.
covering the bourbon balls with the chocolate coating
- Top with half of a pecan and let cool. We chose to use dark chocolate because the ones you get at the distillery are a pure dark chocolate but not a bitter chocolate.
cooling bourbon balls with pecan topping
We let the candy cool over night before eating and by then the chocolate had hardened and the flavors had time to meld together. They were excellent and we got about 40 balls from this recipe at about 8 dollars for everything but the bourbon. This was a savings of about 10 dollars a dozen. So I was able to share them with lots of family and friends. Enjoy!
Maker Mark distillery sign with kids
West Virginia Mountain Mama 