So my husband swears that his grandma made the best rum balls without using cookies and she also used almond paste. Sounds fishy to me, the no-cookies part. Has anyone ever heard of that? What would you use instead of cookies? Nut flour? He also says they were soft and he has no idea what the recipe was.

The original idea behind rum balls? Cookies made with rum. Here are just a few recipes:

http://www.cooks.com/recipe/dz5kl93r/rum-balls.html

http://www.cooks.com/recipe/935ix429/molasses-butter-rum-balls.html

http://www.marthastewart.com/351250/rum-balls

I make my rumballs using crumbled cake, buttercream, chocolate, and rum.  Just dump everything in the mixer and combine until firm.  And then scoop out using a small disher.

Food Wishes . com uses brownies...

I think my husband is just crazy, He swears all it was was almond paste and cocoa powder, no cookies, cake or brownies,etc. I'm going to check with his Mom to confirm this though. I've made rum balls before with chocolate cookie crumbs. Thanks for the recipe links. I just wondered if he was crazy or I was, it's just him though, lols. I think he's hinting that he wants to eat the almond paste that I just bought. I will post back though if his mom does indeed have a recipe without cookies or cake.

Okay, so my mother in law confirmed that my husband is Not crazy.... go figure. Well, here's her recipe:

Rum Balls by Aunt Jo

1 cup of Almond Paste

1 cup of Powdered Sugar

1/2 pound of Grated Bittersweet Chocolate

3 Tablespoons of Rum

1 Tablespoon of Butter

Mix all together thoroughly and shape into balls. Cover with chocolate sparketts (I'm assuming sparketts are like chocolate jimmies).

No cooking out the alcohol or melting of the chocolate or mashing of the cookies..... Guess I'll give it a go :)

I made them and they were very good. Grating is too much work for me, so I used a food processor. The next time I just melted the chocolate, let it cool and then mixed it with everything else. Too much powdered sugar though, will go down to 3/4c because the chocolate sprinkles did not stick very well.

I did try making truffles (10 oz bag of mint chocolate chips with 1/2c heavy cream) and ended up with truffle dough that was way to soft (even after overnight in the fridge). So I popped some almond paste, powdered sugar, creme de cacao, and rum in them and made rum balls with it too. Note: the mint overpowered the alcohol so much that the only flavor you could taste was mint, lols.

On an earlier post, I was asking about creme de cacao. It smells like dark chocolate! How do you people keep from drinking the stuff?! I'm thinking chocolate canoli cookies with that instead of my usual Cream Sherry. I think I need to go buy more milk....

excellent -- i saved your recipe -- thank you