Real food rum balls

Feb 01, 2013by Farmer Liz

I know I'm a bit late with this post, but I ran out of time before Christmas to write about my rum balls. I don't know about other countries, but rum balls seem to be a traditional Christmas food in New Zealand and Australia.

real food rum balls

In a traditional rum ball recipe, the main ingredients are sweetened condensed milk, a packet of biscuits, cocoa, sultanas, rum (of course) and everything is then rolled in coconut. Its not very complicated, but its also not real food. They are full of refined sugar from the milk, which has been processed to high temperatures, so there's not much goodness left and there's probably canola oil and flavour in the biscuits, as well as more sugar. I don't particularly like them, they are too sickly sweet, but I did think it would be interesting to try to find a real food version and see if people could tell the difference.

I started with this recipe, and I also made some traditional rum balls so I could compare. After three batches, I had the consistency right and I preferred the taste. My recipe for real food rum balls:
Chop 2 cups of dried dates and leave to soak for about half an hour. Drain the liquid and retain. Puree the dates to form a paste.

Use a blender or grinder to chop nuts - I used almonds and some "coconut crunch", to make 2 cups.
Combine the nuts with the date paste and 2 Tsp of cocoa powder. Mix up and add the date liquid and a Tsp of coconut oil until the texture feels right. Also add the sultanas depending how much you like them, I used about a cup and a few tsp of rum depending on how much you like rum :)
When the texture is good for rolling, roll about a tsp of mixture in desiccated coconut (I used shredded and it just doesn't stick properly).
Put the balls in the fridge to solidify.
Eat!

I took the batch of traditional rum balls to work and fed them to my work mates. Then I took in the last batch of the real food rum balls. They like both of them. So I think the experiment was a success, I will be making them again next Christmas. What do you think?

eBooks By Eight Acres

View all

eBook - Make Your Own Natural Soap

eBook - Our Experience with House Cows

eBook - A Beginner's Guide to Backyard Chickens and Chicken Tractors

eBook - Advanced Natural Soapmaking Techniques

eBook Bundle - Natural Soapmaking

Eat what you grow, or grow what you eat?

Most conventional vegetable garden planning advice says to "grow what you eat", to look in your fridge for ideas of w...
A Simple Christmas

Do you find this time of year stressful? I used to, but over the last few years we have made a few changes and now C...
Book review: Modern Slow Cooker

I first bought a slow cooker after our first experience butchering a steer at home. Unfortunately, we didn't know tha...
Prickly Pear - weed or useful plant?

The Prickly Pear cactus (Opuntia genus) is native to southern USA, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and tropica...
Butchering Poultry

Last weekend we got up early and prepared for a morning of killing poultry, not my ideal Saturday morning, but the ti...
Cooking with the sun!

I can't remember when I first came across the idea of using a solar cooker. Maybe in Grass Roots magazine or a prepp...