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My mom has a frequently-made recipe for frozen chocolate balls.  Ingredients are simple: butter, sugar, salt, cocoa, oatmeal and water.  Everything gets mixed together, rolled into balls and frozen.  I remember the original recipe called for the frozen balls to be rolled in icing sugar but we decided it made them too messy so we skip that step.  They are the perfect summer cookie - simple to make, no baking, and cool to eat.

I recently realized that I've never seen a recipe like it. I'm curious if anyone here has seen a similar recipe.  Partially because it's so unlikely for me to have a totally unique recipe and partially because I'd love to have other summer frozen cookie options.

I have seen something similar in Scandinavian cookbooks (and purchased them at Ikea several years ago). Comparing to your recipe, rolled oats can be substituted with leftover cake crumbs. Coffee, rum, or orange juice can substituted for water. An flavorful extract may be used too. When made with rum, they are called "romkugler" in Danish, where bakeries sell them as a way to use leftover cake. 

For an EYB recipe search, try searching "cocoa" in the recipe search box, and filtering by ethnicity/Scandinavia & by either recipe types/baking/candy, sweets or recipe types/baking/cakes, small.

That is definitely the original recipe.  Thank you for solving that mystery.  My mom is from northern Iowa, very close to Minnesota so I can see some Scandinavian influence in her cooking.  I wonder when she started putting them in the freezer...  Maybe my grandmother's habit of storing all cookies in the freezer started that habit.

My mother made a very similar 'no bake' cookie with cocoa and oats- it was not baked because the ingredients were stirred stovetop. She never froze them but I might try that out!

I know a similar option: cookies are crushed in a blender, finely chopped nuts, cocoa and butter, and boiled condensed milk are added to it. If the mass is very thick, then you can add a little milk. Sugar to taste. The resulting mass is formed into an elongated piece or cut, frozen and served with tea. My grandma used to make this, it was delicious.