Wrecking Ball

I think, before, we've established that I am not a baker. I'm not sure I'm a cook either, but I have a better success rate there - and cooking is more forgiving than baking.

So, I felt sort of safe with this recipe, considering there was no actual baking. And look: four fucking ingredients.

To mock Ina Garten: "how hard can that be?"

Apparently, pretty fucking hard.

Somewhere in one of my feeds, a recipe to make Oreo Cookie Balls.  I gay'd it up just a bit to call them truffles. Because, you can't get people eating balls without them chuckling like 12 year olds. Myself included.

But let's start, shall we?

Most everything goes into one bowl.

36 Oreos - finely crumbled
6 candy canes - finely crushed
1 package cream cheese - softened
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips

Let's just say, the majority of my time was unwrapping those fucking candy canes and getting the clingy cellophane off my hands - which was damn near impossible. In retrospect, just buying Starlight Mints would have been much much easier.

Not that getting them crushed was an easy task. They break through a plastic bag, if you try to crush them that way. On a cutting board will find pieces parts going flying.

Crushing the cookies was easiest by hand. I tried other ways, but just use clean hands.

Since you are mixing cream cheese (even very soft) into dry cookies, it's like what I'm guessing is like walking through quicksand. It is fucking tough to incorporate the cookies and cream cheese. The ground peppermint (minus one tablespoon of it) was no problem.

Then, again with clean hands, you roll out one inch cookie balls. Allegedly it is supposed to make 48. You can see that it did not.

Maybe these aren't 1" balls.

Or maybe I've been blessed in life never to have seen balls that small. I don't know. I have no gauge for this. Are they 1" circumference? Radii? The directions were not that specific.

But however big your balls may be, place them on a cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper.

Then put your balls in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.  While doing that.......

Let's just say this first attempt at melting chocolate over a double boiler looks nice, but I fucked that up too. It melted, but the chocolate was thick. It seemed too thick to easily coat the cookie balls. So Blobby added a splash of half and half and the chocolate seized up and looked like the cookie dough you see two pictures up.

So I tossed that and did it again, but in the microwave. It was still a thick melting job, but fuck it - I went for it.

....but it wasn't pretty. I don't have a coating cookies in piping hot chocolate technique. Thus my lack of baking skills / experience.

The balls got coated with chocolate and then dusted with a pinch of the leftover peppermint crumbles.

Now folks........here is how they're supposed to look.

.....and here is how they actually turned out.

The ones at the top were the earlier creations and I think I got lazy and sloppy as I went on. Sue me.

After you get them dipped and dusted, they go into the refridge for an hour. It was the only laugh I had of the session when I asked Siri to set a timer for 60 minutes.

All things said: they taste great. They look fair (at best), but they taste great.

They're a little rich, but they're like a rich Thin Mint.

I'd say they're not fit for company, but Mike, my Boston Honey Homey will be seeing these in his mail box soon enough.

I'm fairly safe he doesn't read this blog daily, so these will still be a surprise to him.


.....in many ways.



Song by: Emmylou Harris