Honeyballs have been a Rock family Christmas tradition that goes way back to my childhood. The only time we make these cookies is at Christmastime. Make them any other time, and they would lose their luster and their specialness. This past Saturday, December 5th, was the day we got our Christmas tree, did the interior decorating and did the first batch of honeyballs. Pictures from that day can be found over in the galleries.
What the pictures over there do not show is how the honeyballs were a complete, total, utter, disaster. I might be overdoing it, but they got messed up. I wish I could blame Quincy, but his only job was to roll the ball in the green and red sugar. I can’t blame Dara either. All she did was roll the dough into balls. Hmm, that only leaves me. I will shoulder part of the blame, but believe it or not, I’m going to blame this on Ashby. Allow me to explain.
Ashby has been gone since mid-September, but there are things in the house that remain from his time with us. One of those items still around is the baking soda I bought to de-skunk him a while back after he was sprayed. This is no ordinary baking soda either. This is Walgreens baking soda. I had to buy generic because Ashby got skunked late on a Sunday night and I could not find anything else that was open. Okay, so how does this relate to honeyballs?
The only leavening agent in these cookies is baking soda. There is no baking powder to help carry the load. So, we believe we had old, skanky baking soda that, for whatever reason, was unable to perform its given function. It had one job to do and failed to do it. The resulting cookies? See for yourself:
The honeyball on the right was made today, December 7th, with Arm and Hammer baking soda. Huge difference. The honeywafers, as I call them, are now soft and very, very chewy. Dara will pawn them off at work and we’ll keep the good ones.
Oh, I might be at fault just a smidge too. The dough seemed “wetter” than usual, meaning I might have shorted it on the flour. But, for my money, I’m putting all the blame on the generic baking soda.
And glad to hear that honeyballs were a success on the second try.