These are SO simple to make.

However, with a special touch and some fancy wrapping, you can make them look like gourmet goodies, even if you let the kids help!

I should know. I grew up making these things. My mom called them sugarplums. I have no idea why, since they’re not plums, or even plum flavoured. I suppose you could try and make them with some sort of plum puree, but I prefer this version. Plain and simple and delicious.

Really, all they are, are really thick buttercreams. The secret is in how you mix the ingredients together.

To make these ones, you’ll need-

1lb powdered sugar (about 6 cups)
3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) butter at room temperature
1 tablespoon raspberry extract (though you can use any flavouring that you wish.)
2 bags white chocolate chips
white sprinkles
Extra powdered sugar

You can mix these by hand, or you can mix them with the paddle blade in a stand mixer.

Rather than whip the butter, you want to keep it as dense as possible, so you need to incorporate as little air as possible.

Place the butter in the bottom of the bowl. At LOW speed, begin by blending the butter, then slowly add the powdered sugar, about a cup at a time, allowing each cup to be fully mixed into the butter before adding more. Once all of the powdered sugar is mixed into the butter, you should have a pretty thick dough that separates itself from the side of the bowl. Add the flavouring extract and beat for few more seconds to make sure it is mixed in. At this time you can also add paste colouring. Whatever you do, do not add extra liquid to this recipe. If you don’t feel there is enough flavouring to it, be sure to add more powdered sugar to make up for the extra flavouring you add. The resulting mass should be a thick paste. You may need to add more than 6 cups of powdered sugar, so make sure you have extra powdered sugar on hand.

Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a powdered sugar coated piece of waxed paper (the waxed paper helps absorb any extra moisture when the dough is sitting at room temperature) Pinch off small pieces of the dough and roll into small balls, placing them on another sheet of waxed paper on a cookie sheet. The size of the ball doesn’t really matter, but I’d try to stay around 1″, as the larger ones tend to flatten out.

Once you’ve rolled the dough into balls and placed them on a waxed paper covered baking sheet, put them in the freezer and keep them there until they are solid. This took me about an hour. The larger the balls, the longer they’ll need to freeze.

Just before you remove them from the freezer, melt one bag of white chocolate chips with 1 tablespoon shortening in a double boiler. Stir, and dip each frozen raspberry ball into the white chocolate individually, removing it with a fork and placing it back on the waxed paper coated baking sheet. Sprinkle with white sprinkles and allow to sit for another hour or so at room temperature, so they will set up. if you freeze them, they may melt once removed from the freezer. This recipe makes about 100 1″ish snowballs. Feel free to halve the recipe!

Package and label them. Even just a few in a bag is a nice holiday treat!

I made my bags out of waxed paper that I sealed with a gluestick. They look pretty shnazzy, I think.

Here is the label I made-

…

Anyways, I’m off to spend the weekend with family! I’ll be back on Christmas eve to share a special story and photo post. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

-A.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 3:31 am and is filed under December 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.