Christmas Chocolate Candy Balls

Every Christmas that I can remember has involved mountains and mountains of Mom's (via her mom, my Mam-Maw) homemade Christmas candy.  The chocolate candy balls are my third favorite of her candy recipes.  Last night, for the first time ever, I was allowed to help make them.  Although there were hints of disaster and lots of Mom telling me I wasn't quite competent enough to know all the techniques involved, they turned out as well as could be expected when I am fiddling with a family tradition.

Ingredients:

2 sticks butter
3 cups pecans, chopped
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 boxes powdered sugar
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 lb. paraffin wax

The original recipe, in Mam-Maw's handwriting

The recipe is surprisingly simple, though the construction is tedious and time consuming.  To begin, mix two sticks of oleo (which is an old timey word for margarine, though Mom says butter will work just as well - see the final paragraph of this posting for an awesome example of how the use of this word in family recipes has confused me), three cups of chopped pecans, one can of Eagle Brand Milk (which is simply a brand name of sweetened condensed milk), and two boxes of powdered sugar.  Mix these ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate until cold.  Once the mixture is cold, mold into bite-size balls and refrigerate again.  Allow the candy balls to get very cold, possibly even using the freezer, before moving on to the next step.

Next, melt 12 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1/4 pound of paraffin wax in the top of a double boiler.  Neither Mom nor Mam-Maw believed in investing in a true double boiler that would be brought out once a year, so instead, they stack two slightly differently sized sauce pans to do the trick.  Here are some other ideas to get around purchasing a true double boiler.  Once the chocolate and paraffin has melted, dip the candy balls into the chocolate using toothpicks.  A rotation of four or five toothpicks is sufficient, as the chocolate hardens quickly enough for you to remove a toothpick after you've dipped another three or four candy balls.  Place the chocolate covered candies on wax paper and allow the chocolate to harden.

Once the chocolate has hardened, you're ready to move onto the final step, which is repairing the damage done to the chocolate by the toothpick.  Using a spoon, cover the hole with just a tad of the remaining chocolate to hide the evidence of your dipping.  Once the chocolate has hardened, you're done.  Place the candies in an airtight container and return to the fridge.  Eat them at your chosen pace, but beware the damage they'll do to your diet.

Now back to the oleo story - this word has caused confusion multiple times for the current generation of Spears-Dowling descendants.  My own tale involves twelve-year-old me attempting to make no-bake cookies while Mom was out of the house.  The recipe called for oleo, which I thought was the paraffin wax Mom uses in Christmas candy.  I decided to skip it and the cookies were horribly bitter.  I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong until Mom came home, tasted one of the cookies, spat it out and asked what the heck I'd done wrong.  I explained that I'd left the wax out, which caused her double over in laughter while declaring that I was the most kitchen illiterate member of our family.  I've never repeated the mistake.