Cherry Balls - Helen J.

Sorry this is late, we decided to paint our 17 ft high room and 15 ft high entry, needless to say, my neck hurts.  But I am happy.

Almost as happy as this recipe made me.  You know how it was decided a 4-star rating for a recipe meant "our life was never complete without this recipe, I will share it with all my friends, it was amazing!!"?  Well, this recipe exceeds all those qualifiers.  It was amazing.  I took it to my church ladies' luncheon and was told I can make it whenever I want.  It uses butter, and since I didn't take a photo and had to remake them I thought, "I should use cream cheese instead of butter, it will taste more like cheesecake."  Bad thinking, one should always listen to Helen and do exactly as she says.  The cream cheese was so "runny" it was next to impossible to put the coating on the cherry and it ended up having too much.  I also think margarine would have the same problem so use BUTTER.  That said, I did roll some in Oreos and that was delicious.

The only problem I had with the original recipe was that it didn't indicate how much coconut to use.  I kind of just dumped it in until it looked like a good consistency, approx. 3/4 C.  Also, when you are wrapping the dough around the cherry, have the cherries dried, and ice nearby to cool your hands.  The dough is difficult to work with if your hands are warm.  Lastly, there wasn't a measurement for the graham cracker crumbs so I just used a package and put them in my food processor to make crumbs.  There were some left over, but it worked well.

I also made these GF just by changing the flour.  I didn't feel that xanthan gum was necessary, but if you want to use it, it would be about 1/8 tsp.

Side note, mom said that these were served at Aunt Carolyn's wedding reception.  I had hoped so, because if my Mother-in-law had a recipe like this and she didn't serve it at the reception I would feel insulted.  Since she did, I consider it a sign you were truly loved.

Cherry Balls
1 1/2 C powdered sugar
1/2 C butter (not marg or cream cheese, BUTTER!)
4 T flour
1/8 t salt
1 T milk
1 t vanilla
3/4 C coconut
18 maraschino cherries
1 C graham cracker crumbs

Mix first six ingredients then add coconut and chill for about an hour or more.  Roll into walnut size ball and then flatten and wrap around the cherry.  Roll in the crumbs and chill for 15-20 minutes or freeze.  Makes 18.