"Finish Off My Balls" (Or, Things I Never Thought I'd Say to a Gay Brazilian)

Today was our Christmas potluck luncheon at work. I've been pretty busy and wasn't feeling too inspired culinarily, so I decided to go with the old standby (which they love as much as anything) - chocolate chip cookies.

To give the impression that I wasn't completely mailing it in (which in all honesty, I was), I decided to dip them in chocolate...

Though the results of such were decidedly kick-ass, I felt a little guilty over the half-hearted effort. To make up for it (and since I was doing some chocolate work already), I thought I'd whip up some truffles.

I did some plain dark chocolate ones, but wanted to do something a bit different with the rest. The last time I tasted someone's attempt at homemade truffles, they were supposed to be infused with a variety of different liqueurs. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell the difference between them. All I got was one note - chocolate.

I went to my booze stash and passed by all the typical truffle additions (Grand Marnier, Kahlua, etc.) in favor of... Goldschläger. As is my recent culinary wont, I decided these were either going to suck or be the best thing ever. If I was going down, I was going down hard.

Remembering the bland and unidentifiable truffles I last sampled, I hit my version pretty hard with the cinnamon schnapps and even added a bit of Penzeys' Vietnamese Cassia Cinnamon to boot.*

I tasted them the next day and was caught a bit off-guard. There was no mistaking this flavor. It was much "hotter" than I expected, but very tolerable due to the cream and cocoa butter in the mix. It was as if a bar of dark chocolate and an Atomic Fireball fell in love, got married, and had a baby. With that, my "Atomic Fireball" Truffles were born...

Running with that theme, I decided to add some red food coloring to the powdered sugar before I rolled the truffles. I knew I'd never reach true "Atomic Fireball" red, but once they sat for awhile, the coating absorbed a little moisture and became quite a bit more red than the pink/red above.

When I took them to work, I was still concerned about how "hot" they were, so I made sure to ask potential victims a) if they liked cinnamon, and b) if they liked hot cinnamon.

As it turned out, they were a HUGE hit, especially with our gay lab manager. He's never the shy type anyway, but I think the little bit of booze in the four or five truffles he devoured must've gone to his head. He repeatedly (and loudly) joked to the entire group, "You MUST try Brandon's balls - they're delicious," and comments to that effect, getting much laughter each time.

We had a bunch of food left over at the end of the party, including three or four of my truffles. I told him to take them home.

"Really, can I?" he asked.

"Yeah, why don't you finish off my balls?" I replied, thinking I'd get the last laugh.

I didn't, as he retorted, "You don't know how long I've been waiting to hear you say that!"



* - Don't try this at home. They'll somehow taste like butterscotch.