My folks used to make this every year around the holidays, and even the kids got to have some… the amount of alcohol is vanishingly small per ball, and far far too little to have any sort of substantially inebriating effect.
Give yourself several hours to make this, as there are long sections of just letting stuff sit.
Ingredients
- 1 cup pecans
- ¾ cup bourbon, divided
- 2 cups Nilla Wafers crumbs
- ½ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, divided
- ½ cup confectioners' sugar, divided
- ¼ cup light corn syrup
Directions
- Pour the bourbon over the pecans, then leave the bowl alone (in some sort of airtight container, such as covered in plastic wrap) until the pecans have absorbed a good amount of the bourbon, which will take about 2-3 hours. Drain off and reserve the bourbon.
- Heat the oven to 325°. Put the pecans on a baking sheet (spread out, of course) for 12 to 15 minutes, toasting them a bit. After they cool down, chop them. Don’t turn them into a powder… you want them to provide some texture. Set them aside.
- In a large bowl, combine these things: pecans, wafer crumbs, ¼ cup cocoa powder, ¼ cup confectioners' sugar, corn syrup, and the reserved bourbon. Stir it all up into a smooth dough.
- Roll (lightly press) this dough into ¾-inch balls (each about a heaping tablespoon).
- Get a different bowl and mix together the rest of the cocoa powder and the confectioners' sugar (i.e., ¼ cup each).
- Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment.
- Each of the balls gets coated in the powder-sugar stuff, then put it on the sheet.
- Cover up the sheet and let them chill until they firm up, which usually takes a couple of hours.
That’s it. They’re ready to eat.
In experimenting with this over the years, I once made a version that was better off just spread out as a sheet (with powder sifted onto it) and then just left covered in the fridge to be cut/torn into pieces to suit the individual consumer.
You can read more here about someone else’s variation on the theme.