April 24, 2009
Talk of the South
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Good Eats
Have a Ball
All sorts of interesting things cross the desks of Garden & Gun editors. But last week was a first. There, in our usual stack, sat a demure white box with the picture of a sweet old lady printed on the front and the phrase “Happy Balls!” emblazoned in red. At the bottom of the ingredient list was a warning: “Our balls have nuts.”
Not ones to blush, we opened the box. Inside were nine perfect bourbon balls, each one topped with a single, liquor-soaked pecan. We tried a couple, and minutes later the entire box was gone. If there’s a better bourbon ball, we haven’t tasted it.
Turns out, the founders of this “Happy Balls” business are two actors, Ron Harris and Jane Badgers, who traded in their 500-plus appearances in films and television shows, and a house in New York, for the simple life of mixing chocolate, bourbon, and nuts in Louisville, Kentucky. Can you blame them?
Harris borrowed the recipe from his Aunt Happy (a Kentucky native) and then added his own twists: single-barrel Knob Creek bourbon and dark, dark chocolate. And he made each one twice as big as a typical bourbon ball. You can order as few as two and as many as a hundred. The recipe is the same for all of them, and they’ll run you between $5 and $200. We’re partial to the “Feelin’ Sassy Special” (28 for $65). Try not to eat the whole box.
