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I don’t know about you, but I love baking and taking the most amazing foods when attending parties and functions. Of course, wanting a dessert or dish that someone will gush over sounds vain, but otherwise, why would you ever spend time planning what to bring or making sure your item is perfect?

I don’t know if people bake amazing foods because they want others to love the items or if they want the attention for bringing the very best (that is a blog post for another day), but I do know that I am flattered every time that someone asks me for a recipe. One such recipe is for the glamorous orange ball!

My grandmother and mom catered for my wedding. It was perfect… well, the part that is not a complete haze to me because there was so much going on. One item that I requested for my wedding was orange balls. They look elegant and taste even better.

A few months ago, my grandmother’s friend called and asked if my grandmother would make orange balls for her daughter’s wedding. So I helped my grandmother dig through and find the just-right recipe that we had loved so many years before.

We made nine dozen orange balls for the wedding, and to our surprise, it only took an hour from start to finish for 108 balls of yummy goodness.

Lucy and I escorted my grandmother to this wedding; everyone loved the orange balls. I was even called to a table of people I had never met and was asked to write the recipe on a napkin. When I left the table, we were all good culinary friends.

I want to share that recipe with you today. For whatever reason you love to take excellent food to parties or events, these orange balls will be a shining star!

The Best Orange Balls

1-11 oz box of vanilla wafers, crushed

½ cup pecans, crushed

¾ cup coconut, shredded

¾ cup confectioners’ sugar

½ cup undiluted frozen orange juice, slightly thawed

Extra confectioners’ sugar for rolling

Crush one box of vanilla wafers in a food processor or blender.

Place the wafers in a large mixing bowl and set them aside. Crush your pecans in the Vitamix (or food processor/blender/smash with a rolling pin). Combine the pecans and the vanilla wafer mixture. It is okay if some wafers and nuts are crushed heavily while others are in pieces.

Add the coconut and confectioners’ sugar to the wafer and pecan mixture. Stir the dry ingredients.

Add ½ cup of undiluted frozen orange juice to the mixture and combine with a wooden spoon or your hands. You may think there is not enough juice to coat all the dry ingredients, but I promise there is. Just keep mixing.

When you can squeeze all of the ingredients together and they hold firmly, begin rolling the mixture into balls. Set the rolled balls on a long sheet of parchment paper/aluminum foil/Roul’Pat. Continue rolling balls until you are finished with the mixture.

Place ample confectioners’ sugar into a large bowl and begin rolling the orange balls in the sugar. Roll to coat the balls well (I place 5-6 at a time in the sugar and move them all around).

Set the sugar-covered orange balls back onto your paper/foil/Roul’Pat. When you have finished covering all the balls, place them on a platter or in a large container and refrigerate until you are ready to serve! Sprinkle some extra sugar on the balls before serving if needed.

Whatever occasion is coming up, I hope the orange balls are the star of your party. Enjoy!