Bourban balls, or super classy jim bean balls

Apparently I am crazy, because I decided that I will participate in Australian Mofo in a crazy busy month for me. But I'm hoping that it will get me out of my food rut that I have been in lately and get me back to making and blogging about interesting yummy food.

It's Amy at Iron Chef Vegan fabulous idea to have it one month early for Australians, which is great because while September is going to be crazy, October is going to be even busier for me. So the goal is to post every day about vegan food, but since we are lazy Aussie's we will aim for 4-5 a week. There are quite a few vegan Aussie blogs participating including unwakeable, vegan sixteen, tropical vegan, Annabananabomb, ink and venom, twilight and shadow (from NZ), and for esme.

Anyway on to the food.

It was my dad's birthday recently and I wanted to make him something, but he is pretty picky when it comes to desserts. However, I know that he loves Jim Bean so I decided to make something with it. The first thing I thought of was rum balls, I found this great recipe from vegalicious which was easy and which my dad loved:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups vanilla wafer crumbs or digestive biscuits
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 cup pecans or walnuts, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup rum or bourbon
  
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• 1/3 cup corn syrup
• 1/2 cup of shredded coconut
  

Directions:

1. Using a kitchen machine, or blender or food processor or a rolling pin (depending on what you have available), turn the cookies into fine crumbs.
2. Combine biscuit/wafer crumbs and chopped nuts.
3. Add remaining dry ingredients in bowl and mix thoroughly.
4. Mix the corn syrup and rum together and then add to the crumb mixture, using a big spoon or fork, mix all together well. It will be a sticky mass.You can put it in the refrigerator for a short time to harden a bit before making the balls, sometimes this makes it easier, or less sticky.
5. Roll into balls 1 inch in diameter then roll balls in either confectioners’ sugar or finely chopped nuts. I obviously used coconut.

Makes 40-48 balls. Store in a cookie tin or container tightly sealed.

I only used a quarter cup of bourbon which is an exactly one mintaure bottle of jim bean because I thought they would be too strong but all of the bourbon drinkers said that they could use more. I am going to make some more this weekend for fathers day for my stepdad and include his favourite drink Johnnie Walker.