Cherry Coconut Bonbons

It's no secret that I love to make all kinds of treats during the Holidays. But since the economy is still firmly planted in the crapper (around here anyhow), I have decided to scale back my cookie and candy making this year in an effort to save some money. Instead of all 9 varieties I made last year, I will only be making the most requested treats. Now of course that means that the most favorite treats also happen to be the most difficult and tedious to make... but what would the Holidays be without stress?

Aaaand since I have not posted a recipe in a long time, I decided to post my recipe for Chocolate Covered Cherry Coconut Bonbons, a treat so sweet it makes your teeth hurt, but the family loves them!


The ingredients:
And of course the assistance of a cute helper... blue whiskers optional. BTW, Binny had her stitches removed yesterday and is healing nicely.

Mix together the butter, powdered sugar, coconut, almond flavoring and sweetened condensed milk in a heavy duty mixer. Seriously I have burned up several hand mixers with this recipe but the Kitchenaid seems to handle it all quite well.
Next cover the mixture and chill it in the refrigerator or if you live somewhere cold like me, you can just set it outside for a few minutes until the dough is stiff enough to work with. Then scoop out a tablespoon of the dough and flatten in your hand. Then place half a cherry in the center and pull up the sides of the dough and shape into a ball.

Again chill in the fridge or outside then dip in tempered* chocolate.What my helper was busy with while I dipped the bonbons...
And voila!

*Tempering chocolate is a way of melting chocolate so that it stays hard at room temperature. After several years of practice I seem to have the tempering process down, but the first few years were not so pretty. Here's a link to directions on chocolate tempering.

Chocolate Covered Cherry Bonbons

1 bag- 2# Powdered sugar
1 stick butter
1/4 teaspoon almond flavoring
1 bag- 14 oz. flaked coconut
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 jar of Maraschino cherries, drained and halved

Combine powdered sugar, butter, almond flavoring and condensed milk. Chill. Take 1 tablespoonful and flatten in your hand. Place cherry inside and roll up, completely sealing the cherry inside. Chill.

Melt and temper chocolate in a double boiler and dip bonbons in the chocolate. Cool on waxed paper.