Mint Truffles or Balls de la Creme de Menthe

Everyone sufficiently stuffed from their holiday eating? Yes? Too bad, because I have one more nommy.

Now if you don't like mint, you're off the hook. This one isn't for you, my friend.
If, however, you are like me and could survive solely on a diet of mint chocolate chip ice cream (especially if it has chewy fudge chunks instead of chips - yum), then you might want to keep reading.

I found a recipe for mint balls (There is NO way to make that sound less dirty. Balls = funny word) in my holiday cooking/baking magazine. I was all, "I should make these." Upon examination, the recipe called for some serious microwave usage. And you know, I don't have one. Usually I wing it when a recipe calls for microwave time and just use the toaster oven or stove top, but I wasn't going to chance this. So it was a no go.

But then HOLD THE PHONE. My parents have a microwave! Score! So the pictures below detail the mint balls in making. In Michigan. At my parents' house.

First you mix the inside ingredients. It takes a lot of powdered sugar. LOT.

Then the recipe called for adding nuts. Who puts nuts in their mint balls? That's crazy talk. I love nuts with chocolate, caramel, and ice cream, but NOT with mint. Never. So I added baby chocolate chips instead. It looked like this:

Then you make them into tiny balls. Like this:

And this (I am working on photographing manually while adjusting my aperture. If this interests you, cool. If not, then it probably looks like another boring picture of balls.):

Lastly, here is where I cried a lot and begged someone else to finish it for me it got tough. I had to dip each of those little buggers into a chocolate concoction that I had created. Pain in the butt.

But then again, I got to eat them and it was pretty much as delicious as mint chocolate ice cream, so all is good.

So good, in fact, that I might bring home my microwave from work (a co-worker gave it to me when she retired, I didn't purchase it) next holiday season and make these bad boys.

I'm quite proud of all my bravery this holiday season. I tried at least five NEW recipes, which is a bunch for me. And all were a success!

Anyone else try out a new recipe? Or maybe a family favorite?