"Cut them up and fold them into softened vanilla ice cream. Refreeze and then serve with caramel or hot fudge sauce for a wicked dessert." What a fantastic suggestion. As a "company only food" story, when my four brothers and I were little, my father would buy a huge milk chocolate bar (maybe 1.5" x 10" x 10" or something like that) right before the holidays. He would control distribution and timing and we'd each get a small chunk now and then. One year, my parents had a Christmas party and put the chocolate bar, unattended, in the kitchen. The five of us kids went to work on it. Three of my brothers ate so much they got sick, one forgot to clean the chocolate off his hands and one had chocolate on his shirt. They were all yelled at and grounded. Being the only girl I knew to wash my hands, check my clothing for chocolate and not eat so much as to get sick. I hid a few chunks in my room for another day. I did not get grounded. Girls do mature faster than boys.
At the national tax office of a Big 4 CPA firm, there was a weekly technical meeting of the International Tax Group. We discussed current tax issues and hashed out what the firm's position would be on an issue. Mid December one year, one of the administrative assistants made cookies and brought them to the lunch. Many delicious bourbon balls were consumed.
The discussions, never calm at the best of times (experts tend to be loudly opinionated) got so loud and vehement that the leader suddenly realized what had happened--"You're all drunk! Go back to your offices and don't do anything important this afternoon!"
I followed instructions--did some billing and went home early.
That is funny! I worked as a nurse. One nurse made Christmas cookies and brought them to the hospital. I bit into one and thought I'll be fired for drinking on the job, so I wrapped them up and ate them at home.
That would have been hysterical--knowing that group, they probably would have permitted some crazy tax deal that would have put us on the front page of the WSJ.
LOVED this one, and not just for the booze. Company food in my house growing up was hot dogs in blankets (yum!) at cocktail parties and when everyone went in for dinner I went around the living room finishing up all the cocktails and especially enjoying the leftover marachino cherries and olives at the bottom of the glasses.
Give me that old time religion - the high speed train from New Orleans to Boston, a hello in New York to Nova Scotia, to and fro. The Acadians will get you that 1604 Chartreuse (balls).
We were not a bourbon ball family as my parents preferred their bourbon on the rocks. I didn’t discover them until an adult.. and it was love at first nibble. Give Biscoff cookies a try with them ♥️
Our “company food” was kielbasa sausage, chopped into disks, that my dad would fry up in a skillet to make crispy, with cheddar cheese cubes, served on a tray with toothpicks. I LOVED this and always wished we had it more. No sneaking bites in advance though, because eww cold sausage. The whole vibe aligns with the indoor ash trays (for visitors) and hand- crocheted trivets that littered the end tables.
This looks roughly like my grandmother's recipe, though she insisted that they needed a few days to cure. That's my New Orleans grandmother who kept a pitcher of daiquiris in her freezer at all times, not my Nebraska grandmother who was a fantastic baker though didn't partake of alcohol.
My Mom baked for a month before the holidays. There were red cakes in the freezer waiting for her cream cheese icing when thawed, pecan tassies, pralines, and sugar cookies enrobed in royal icing. She always made a huge amount of rum balls and fruit cakes soaked in bourbon. She would store them to " age" in a large wooden pickling barrel in the hall. Fruit cakes wrapped in cheesecloth would get a new douse of bourbon every few days. I remember opening that closet and getting hit with the smells of booze and sugar. We joked about getting a bit high just from the smell. And, yeah, we always pinched a rum ball and a pecan sandiethat shared the cookie barrel. Who wouldn't?!
I took these to work one Christmas season not really thinking. When a coworker came for her 6th? 7th? and giggled like a little kid it hit me there was actual booze and she was quite tipsy. (I too added more bourbon) Had to drive her home.
My pumpkin pie recipe with bourbon came from a spiral bound collection of Tuscaloosa AL women titled Winning Seasons, 1979 edition by the Junior League. I think Bear Bryant was the football coach then. My brother was on the faculty at the University. The cookbook had lengthy and rich recipes.
that's the thing, there is no baking involved. You take smashed vanilla wafers, finely chopped nuts, cocoa, confectioner's sugar and booze and roll them into balls. So they are very much still alcohol induced. And yummy!
My mother made a great ice cream dessert. She was able to get rectangular angel food cake at the A&P. She sliced it lengthwise into three layers. The two middle layers got a slab of softened strawberry and butter pecan ice cream. She topped it with the remaining layer, covered it in whipped cream, garnished it with cherries and pecans, and put it back in the freezer. It was lovely and delicious. I guess we have to bake our own angel food cake in a loaf pan!
My mother did the same thing using orange and lime sherbet between the horizontal layers of angel food cake she cut -- back in the 1950s. Store bought angel food cake came in a rectangular loaf then.
Melissa - don’t you have any New Orleans/Louisiana community cookbooks? You know they’ll have booze in their bourbon/rum balls. If you don’t, you might want to look for a copy of River Road Recipes.
I personally make Rose Levy Beranbaum’s bourbon balls. The recipe is included in her new cookie book, The Cookie Bible. The only problem is, I used to use Nabisco Famous Wafers if I was looking for a shortcut, but Nabisco is no longer making them! (Do these food companies not realize they are messing with our recipes? See also garlic cheese roll, cake mix size, etc.) There are other chocolate cookies to try, but no clear winner has emerged.
What is wrong with Nabisco! No famous wafers! Yes, I know I could make my own but that seems so ridiculous. How am I going to make the famous wafer dessert, a huge tradition in my family that I was trying to pass on to my grandchildren. And Nabisco’s suggestion that I use Oreo thins is disgusting.
I also think oreo thins are disgusting for this. Why would I want that shortening goo in my dessert? (Although Ina Garten’s outrageous brownies with chopped up oreos are pretty good. It’s a matter of place)
It’s not the same, but you can use Tate’s choc chip cookies in the famous wafer dessert. I got this idea from Ina Garten’s version which uses Tate’s cookies AND mocha whipped cream. My office went crazy over this. (Tate’s also has a ginger snap cookie right now & with some tweaks would make a great holiday dessert)
dewey’s has a chocolate cookie that is supposed to be pretty good & could replace the wafers. I’ve read that the Goya & such brands of chocolate cookies are NOT good.
Then Laurie Colwin has a chocolate wafer cookie from the old Settlement cookbook that is probably a worthy sub. Only that’s more work, which kind of defeats the purpose of an icebox cake.
I’m going to make my third batch of these this weekend. Holiday parties and cookie exchanges. My husband was a trifle upset when he saw I was using the single malt Scottish whiskey but agreed they were delicious. My grocery didn’t have vanilla wafers, so weird, luckily they do have graham crackers and golden syrup. How did we get convinced to use corn syrup instead? Anyway they are so delicious it’s hard to overstate!!!!
I fondly remember my great-aunt Betty making rum balls with us on Thanksgiving night after all the dishes were cleared. She mixed up the ingredients, we helped roll them into balls. Then they went into a Newport Creamery plastic ice cream tub and were placed on top of the fridge.
Each Sunday until Christmas, the lid was removed to add more rum. They were mighty fine by Christmas!!
"Cut them up and fold them into softened vanilla ice cream. Refreeze and then serve with caramel or hot fudge sauce for a wicked dessert." What a fantastic suggestion. As a "company only food" story, when my four brothers and I were little, my father would buy a huge milk chocolate bar (maybe 1.5" x 10" x 10" or something like that) right before the holidays. He would control distribution and timing and we'd each get a small chunk now and then. One year, my parents had a Christmas party and put the chocolate bar, unattended, in the kitchen. The five of us kids went to work on it. Three of my brothers ate so much they got sick, one forgot to clean the chocolate off his hands and one had chocolate on his shirt. They were all yelled at and grounded. Being the only girl I knew to wash my hands, check my clothing for chocolate and not eat so much as to get sick. I hid a few chunks in my room for another day. I did not get grounded. Girls do mature faster than boys.
Bourbon ball story:
At the national tax office of a Big 4 CPA firm, there was a weekly technical meeting of the International Tax Group. We discussed current tax issues and hashed out what the firm's position would be on an issue. Mid December one year, one of the administrative assistants made cookies and brought them to the lunch. Many delicious bourbon balls were consumed.
The discussions, never calm at the best of times (experts tend to be loudly opinionated) got so loud and vehement that the leader suddenly realized what had happened--"You're all drunk! Go back to your offices and don't do anything important this afternoon!"
I followed instructions--did some billing and went home early.
That is funny! I worked as a nurse. One nurse made Christmas cookies and brought them to the hospital. I bit into one and thought I'll be fired for drinking on the job, so I wrapped them up and ate them at home.
I guess you need Alice B. Toklas brownies if you want to calm the meeting down.
That would have been hysterical--knowing that group, they probably would have permitted some crazy tax deal that would have put us on the front page of the WSJ.
LOVED this one, and not just for the booze. Company food in my house growing up was hot dogs in blankets (yum!) at cocktail parties and when everyone went in for dinner I went around the living room finishing up all the cocktails and especially enjoying the leftover marachino cherries and olives at the bottom of the glasses.
O
M
G!
You've done it now, Rothkopf!!!!!!
Give me that old time religion - the high speed train from New Orleans to Boston, a hello in New York to Nova Scotia, to and fro. The Acadians will get you that 1604 Chartreuse (balls).
E. Jean Carrol
I often wish I lived in the Mad Men era, the music, the food and frolicking
We were not a bourbon ball family as my parents preferred their bourbon on the rocks. I didn’t discover them until an adult.. and it was love at first nibble. Give Biscoff cookies a try with them ♥️
Our “company food” was kielbasa sausage, chopped into disks, that my dad would fry up in a skillet to make crispy, with cheddar cheese cubes, served on a tray with toothpicks. I LOVED this and always wished we had it more. No sneaking bites in advance though, because eww cold sausage. The whole vibe aligns with the indoor ash trays (for visitors) and hand- crocheted trivets that littered the end tables.
This looks roughly like my grandmother's recipe, though she insisted that they needed a few days to cure. That's my New Orleans grandmother who kept a pitcher of daiquiris in her freezer at all times, not my Nebraska grandmother who was a fantastic baker though didn't partake of alcohol.
Also, 2 tbs bourbon added to pumpkin pie really enriches the flavor! Yum!
This post wins today’s Best Thread Award 🥇 y’all are great storytellers 😍
My Mom baked for a month before the holidays. There were red cakes in the freezer waiting for her cream cheese icing when thawed, pecan tassies, pralines, and sugar cookies enrobed in royal icing. She always made a huge amount of rum balls and fruit cakes soaked in bourbon. She would store them to " age" in a large wooden pickling barrel in the hall. Fruit cakes wrapped in cheesecloth would get a new douse of bourbon every few days. I remember opening that closet and getting hit with the smells of booze and sugar. We joked about getting a bit high just from the smell. And, yeah, we always pinched a rum ball and a pecan sandiethat shared the cookie barrel. Who wouldn't?!
And if you have a friend or family member who is gluten intolerant, use sweet rice flour (Koda Farms brand works nicely.)
Bless you 😘
I took these to work one Christmas season not really thinking. When a coworker came for her 6th? 7th? and giggled like a little kid it hit me there was actual booze and she was quite tipsy. (I too added more bourbon) Had to drive her home.
My pumpkin pie recipe with bourbon came from a spiral bound collection of Tuscaloosa AL women titled Winning Seasons, 1979 edition by the Junior League. I think Bear Bryant was the football coach then. My brother was on the faculty at the University. The cookbook had lengthy and rich recipes.
I thought the alcoholic content baked away in the oven. 🤷🏼♀️
that's the thing, there is no baking involved. You take smashed vanilla wafers, finely chopped nuts, cocoa, confectioner's sugar and booze and roll them into balls. So they are very much still alcohol induced. And yummy!
Nice! 😜
My mother made a great ice cream dessert. She was able to get rectangular angel food cake at the A&P. She sliced it lengthwise into three layers. The two middle layers got a slab of softened strawberry and butter pecan ice cream. She topped it with the remaining layer, covered it in whipped cream, garnished it with cherries and pecans, and put it back in the freezer. It was lovely and delicious. I guess we have to bake our own angel food cake in a loaf pan!
My mother did the same thing using orange and lime sherbet between the horizontal layers of angel food cake she cut -- back in the 1950s. Store bought angel food cake came in a rectangular loaf then.
Melissa - don’t you have any New Orleans/Louisiana community cookbooks? You know they’ll have booze in their bourbon/rum balls. If you don’t, you might want to look for a copy of River Road Recipes.
I personally make Rose Levy Beranbaum’s bourbon balls. The recipe is included in her new cookie book, The Cookie Bible. The only problem is, I used to use Nabisco Famous Wafers if I was looking for a shortcut, but Nabisco is no longer making them! (Do these food companies not realize they are messing with our recipes? See also garlic cheese roll, cake mix size, etc.) There are other chocolate cookies to try, but no clear winner has emerged.
What is wrong with Nabisco! No famous wafers! Yes, I know I could make my own but that seems so ridiculous. How am I going to make the famous wafer dessert, a huge tradition in my family that I was trying to pass on to my grandchildren. And Nabisco’s suggestion that I use Oreo thins is disgusting.
I also think oreo thins are disgusting for this. Why would I want that shortening goo in my dessert? (Although Ina Garten’s outrageous brownies with chopped up oreos are pretty good. It’s a matter of place)
It’s not the same, but you can use Tate’s choc chip cookies in the famous wafer dessert. I got this idea from Ina Garten’s version which uses Tate’s cookies AND mocha whipped cream. My office went crazy over this. (Tate’s also has a ginger snap cookie right now & with some tweaks would make a great holiday dessert)
dewey’s has a chocolate cookie that is supposed to be pretty good & could replace the wafers. I’ve read that the Goya & such brands of chocolate cookies are NOT good.
Then Laurie Colwin has a chocolate wafer cookie from the old Settlement cookbook that is probably a worthy sub. Only that’s more work, which kind of defeats the purpose of an icebox cake.
Oh. And Nabisco is now owned by Mondolez International. What do they know about why we buy some of their products.
That explains a lot, unfortunately.
I’m going to make my third batch of these this weekend. Holiday parties and cookie exchanges. My husband was a trifle upset when he saw I was using the single malt Scottish whiskey but agreed they were delicious. My grocery didn’t have vanilla wafers, so weird, luckily they do have graham crackers and golden syrup. How did we get convinced to use corn syrup instead? Anyway they are so delicious it’s hard to overstate!!!!
I fondly remember my great-aunt Betty making rum balls with us on Thanksgiving night after all the dishes were cleared. She mixed up the ingredients, we helped roll them into balls. Then they went into a Newport Creamery plastic ice cream tub and were placed on top of the fridge.
Each Sunday until Christmas, the lid was removed to add more rum. They were mighty fine by Christmas!!