Cookies, Ice Cream and Rum Balls

My afternoon turned into culinary experimentation yesterday. With a *free* day of no work and no pre-scheduled errands, I had a large window to create a few tasty tidbits for upcoming events. I started with pre-cut cookies in a box to bring to a dinner and charades party at a friend's house. That turned into needing ice cream to make ice cream cookie sandwiches. Once I ate some lunch and finished those two projects, I moved onto rum balls for our soccer-watching get together this weekend. When all was said and done, I was tired.

ICE CREAM
When my sister gave me the ice cream maker for my birthday/Christmas gift, she also gave me the Ben & Jerry's recipe book. I made Jerry's Chocolate to pair with the cookies. Aside from lots of dairy (not so friendly for me), it involves melting chocolate over a (make shift) double boiler before titrating in the remaining ingredients. It's a little time consuming, but melting chocolate slowly can be quite the enjoyable contemplative activity. Once the ingredients are put together, it has to cool in the fridge, leaving a bit of time to: a) bake the cookies and b) eat some lunch. Once it's cool, it's time to throw it in the ice cream maker.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
Dad brought me the cookies in a box to try a while back. French Meadow's idea behind the box was that you can make them one by one and have a hot cookie whenever you want one. It's genius. I decided to make the whole box since I was planning on feeding more than one person. They would have been perfect. When I took them out, they needed like 2 more minutes. And then I forgot about them for about 5. Oh well. The bottoms are a bit dark, but the rest of their GF, CF, SF cookiness is great- crumbly, not too sugary.

RUM BALLS
Our theme for World Cup soccer watching (US VS England) is balls. Yes, balls. Meatballs, cheese balls, popcorn balls, and rum balls will all be included. I can count the times I have eaten rum balls on about two fingers. I really didn't know what I was getting into. I used Martha Stewart's recipe. It involved making a brownie (I subbed regular flour for GF flour), then letting it cool. The cooled brownie is crumbed into a mixing bowl and rum is added. What should happen, per the recipe, is a giant ball should form. No clumping happened for me. Clumpage is essential for forming the balls. I added Karo syrup and a little more rum until the crumbs clumped. Whallah! Balls. We'll see how good they are when they get served cold on Saturday.