Rumballs

My mother has a book of recipes that she put together from recipes of her own, old family recipes, ones from friends and neighbours and weird concoctions we picked up while travelling.

Everything in our house was made by hand so as kids we learned to make most of the things in the recipe book and some I still remember today.

We used to make Rum Balls every Christmas in vast quantities that would be placed into jars and given to everyone. I don't like chunks of orange peel in anything other than marmalade so my Mother's Rum Ball recipe suited me just fine.

Ingredients:

• 12 crushed weetbix
  
• 2 tins of sweetened condensed milk
  
• 1 cup of raisins
  
• 200ml of Dark Rum
  
• 4 Tablespoons of cocoa (I'll be using West African Red)
  
• Dessicated Coconut for rolling
  

Method:

Soak the raisins in 100ml of the rum. The longer the better - sometimes we left them to soak overnight.

Crush the weetbix into fine pieces (this was always my job) and add the cocoa powder - mix well.

Add one tin of condensed milk and work this into the mix. The consistency you are looking for is firm but pliable like a pastry dough - you may need to open and add all or part of the second tin.

Add the raisins and work them in gently (they'll be quite soft, what with all the rum they've drunk already. . .)

Taste the mixture - is it rummy enough? If not add a little more rum.

Use a teaspoon to measure out enough for each ball and roll the balls, dropping them into a tray of dessicated coconut - roll them in this then place into jars - best refridgerated for storage but removed an hour or so before eating.

Drink the remaining rum (this was always Grandad's favourite bit).

In fact, my Grandfather had a slightly different method that involved a swig of rum between each step. Seemed effective as his rumballs were famous.