Booze Balls with Dark Chocolate and Amaretto

This easy recipe for booze balls is made with melted dark chocolate, crushed cookies, ground nuts, and Amaretto liqueur for a boozy chocolate truffle that makes a delicious homemade gift for the holidays!

Booze balls are easy to make and are a great edible homemade gift that you can send to loved ones. They don't require refrigeration and can be stored at room temperature for a month.

In fact, storing them allows the booze flavours to develop over time, infusing the cookie crumbs in the mixture. So it's actually better to make these ahead and store them for a couple of weeks before serving them!

Booze balls or amaretto balls are easier to make than chocolate truffles. Truffles are made from chocolate ganache (like these Earl grey chocolate truffles made from a 1:1 ratio of dark chocolate to cream by weight). Truffles require refrigeration to store them because they are made with cream. They also require careful mixing of the ingredients because the ganache is an emulsion that is delicate and can break.

I'd say booze balls are more akin to cake truffles, which are made by combining crumbs of leftover cake with milk or alcohol. You can make Christmas cake balls from leftover light fruitcake and booze, and you can make birthday cake truffles with leftover confetti cake.

Jump to:

• What You Need to Make Amaretto Balls
• Substitutions and Variations
• How to Make Booze Balls
• Storage Information
• More Homemade Gifts
• 📖 Recipe

What You Need to Make Amaretto Balls

These amaretto chocolates are made from a simple list of ingredients. Here's what you need:

• chocolate-I prefer to make these with dark 70 % chocolate
• corn syrup-you can use light or golden/dark corn syrup but remember darker corn syrup has a flavour that will impact how the amaretto truffles taste
• sugar-you will need both icing sugar and granulated sugar
• nuts-I use either whole or ground nuts, typically almonds or walnuts
• alcohol-I always make these with amaretto liqueur, which is almond-flavoured and slightly sweet
• cookie crumbs-I used social tea biscuits, which are a plain, dry, vanilla-flavoured cookie that you can grind in the food processor to make crumbs.

Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.

Substitutions and Variations

• Nuts-this recipe is even easier if you use ground almonds, but you can use any nut, especially walnuts or pecans. Grind them in a food processor if you can to make them easier to incorporate and to give the truffles a finer texture. Pistachios would also be amazing here (but this would be more expensive).
• Nut-free-if you want to make nut-free booze balls, replace the nuts with sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds. Grind them as finely as possible.
• Cookies-I used plain social tea biscuits which are quite affordable and readily available in grocery stores. You could also use vanilla wafers or even graham crackers/graham cracker crumbs but the latter will add more flavour to the chocolates.
• Alcohol-I love to use amaretto, but you could also try Kahlua for a coffee-flavoured booze ball, Frangelico for a hazelnut-flavoured booze ball, Cointreau for an orange-flavoured booze ball, or any of your favourite liqueurs. You could also try bourbon or rum. The resulting chocolates will be slightly less sweet but still delicious!
• Coating-I always coat booze balls in granulated sugar or superfine sugar. I love how this looks. You could also roll them in cocoa powder or icing sugar if you prefer. Another option is to coat the truffles in a very thin layer of melted chocolate and then roll in ground nuts.

How to Make Booze Balls

Booze balls are a great no-bake Christmas treat to prepare for the holidays. I like to make them a month before and store them in the freezer. Here's how to make them:

Step 1-Place the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl and set it over a pan of simmering water (image 1). Melt the chocolate until smooth (image 2), then add the corn syrup (image 3) and stir it in. The chocolate mixture will thicken slightly (image 4).

Please note that you can melt the chocolate in the microwave if you prefer, but I like to do this step on the stove.

Step 2-Place your plain biscuits or wafers in the food processor (image 5) and grind them into fine crumbs (image 6), then add the melted chocolate mixture, ground nuts, icing sugar, and alcohol (image 7). Process the mixture until it comes together into a cohesive mass (image 8).

Step 3-Scoop the mixture into small truffles (image 9) and then roll them in a shallow dish of granulated sugar to coat them (image 10).

Storage Information

You can store these chocolate amaretto truffles at room temperature for a couple of weeks, but for longer storage, place them in an airtight container in the freezer.

More Homemade Gifts

If you like to give homemade gifts for the holidays, here are a few other easy confection recipes to try:

If you tried this recipe for the best booze balls (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!

📖 Recipe