Chocolate Covered Oreo Balls

Hi Friends! I hope you’re having a relaxing weekend but I’m sure many of you are running around like crazy trying to get everything done before the holidays.  Either baking, shopping, wrapping presents, or attending holiday parties.  I’ve been busy baking.  If you could call today’s recipe “baking”.

I wanted to make these balls for my next door neighbor down here in Aruba who watches our house while we’re not here.  He keeps an eye out on the place for us and goes far and beyond the neighborly call of duty.  He is one-in-a-million and although we bestow wine, liquor, and restaurant gift certificates upon him, I also wanted to make him something homemade.  And decadent.  But also didn’t want to turn on my oven to make such a dessert.

Chocolate Covered Oreo Balls

For the Balls
1 Package of Oreo Cookies (I used a 14 oz package and used all but 5 cookies from it)
1 8 oz Block or Tub of Cream Cheese (I chose Whipped Cream Cheese since I knew I was doing this by hand and thought that would be easier to work with than a block)

For the Chocolate Dip
1.5 Bags of Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips (1 bag = 12 oz, 1.5 bag = 18 oz of chocolate chips)

Optional: Vanilla extract to taste
Optional: 1/2 c Half & Half, cream, or other (nut) milk
Optional: 1/3 c (vegan) butter or butter.  I’m sure coconut oil would work too but be aware of the flavor change that will happen.
Note: I found melting the chips in the microwave I have here too tricky without some milk + butter to help the process along and liquify the chocolate enough for dipping 

Directions
Crush the Oreos and stir in the cream cheese.
Set in the freezer (at least 10 minutes) while making the chocolate dipping sauce.
Remove from the freezer, dip the balls, and place on parchment paper and freeze again until serving.   Store in the freezer or fridge.
Yields 40 balls.  If you rolled these smaller, i.e. had more patience than I did, you could get 50 out of this recipe.

Pictures of the Process

Poured my Oreos in a produce bag and smooshed them.  Kept me from getting black Oreo crumbs underneath my nails.

Add the Cream Cheese and Stir to incorporate

Form the balls, then freeze.  If you have the patience, the smaller the ball is, the better.  See note at beginning of the post, i.e. golf ball size, max.  No baseball sized-balls.  That would be Oreo gluttony.  Haha!

Making the Chocolate Dip

It’s time to take your balls out of the freezer and get ready to go for a bath, kids.  A chocolate bath.

Fish them out, one by one, with a spoon and place on a parchment-lined tray.

After freezing again and allowing the chocolate to harden, this is what they look like

 

Here they are packaged up and ready to go!

And I also packaged up a few more containers for other neighbors and friends down here

Everything is waiting in the freezer til we see our friends next.  I really need to forget that these things are just sitting here waiting in the freezer….

From yesterday’s post about my Aruba Island Exercise Path and Photos of my Route, I’m glad you enjoyed it.  Plus, now I can go back and look at these and have my own little trip down memory lane.  Blogging for my own reasons, as discussed.

Have you ever had Oreo Balls?