Kentucky · Dessert
Kentucky Bourbon Balls
- Intermediate
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma.
Ingredients
- 150g vanilla wafers or pecans, ground fine
- 250g icing sugar
- 55g butter, softened
- 4 tbsp bourbon
- 2 tbsp corn syrup
- 100g chopped pecans
- 300g dark chocolate for dipping
- Pecan halves to top
Equipment
Parchment · Sheet pan
The skills inside
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binderShaping by hand
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · nuts · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Beat the butter with the icing sugar, bourbon, and corn syrup until smooth.
- Work in the ground wafers and chopped pecans to a stiff, moldable paste.
- Roll into small balls and chill on a tray until firm, 30 min. 30 min
- Melt the chocolate and dip each ball, letting the excess drip off.
- Set on parchment, press a pecan half on top, and let the chocolate firm up. They improve after a day.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes
- It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
- It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
- It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
- The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
- It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.
Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.
Shaping by hand 85 recipes
- The pieces match: weighed, or judged against each other rather than by dividing the mass by eye, so that no piece is half again the size of its neighbour.
- Surfaces are smooth and unbroken with no cracks, tears, or dry patches, and the seams are sealed and sitting underneath.
- The shape is defined and it holds while the tray waits: it has not slumped, spread, or relaxed back out of its form.
- Nothing is trapped that should not be: no air pocket where filling should be, no filling breaking through the surface, and no excess flour greying the outside.
- They finish together in the heat: no piece done while another is still raw, which is the only test that the first mark was met.
Where it goes wrong The dough was worked past its point or shaped without a rest, so it fought back: the pieces spring out of shape on the tray and bake tight, uneven, and torn along the surface.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Banyuls or Ruby Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry
- From the Taps
- Imperial stout
- Zero-Proof
- Espresso
Chocolate wants fortified sweetness or roast-bitter contrast: the wine must out-sweet the plate, or oppose it entirely.
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