Tags: 12daysofchristmascookies Chocolate Christmas cookies Holiday Sweet Tooth
Tale of the Peanut Butter Ball
When I was little my mom used to make peanut butter balls every holiday season. They were basically peanut butter truffles dipped in chocolate, and they were divine—the most perfect little peanut-buttery-chocolatey goodness you could ever put in your mouth (no, they didn’t taste like Reese’s cups…they were better than Reese’s). Then out of nowhere she suddenly stopped. No more peanut butter balls for me. I must not have made a big fuss at the time because she never went back to making them. Now it’s been about fifteen years since she’s made those little nuggets of goodness. It’s a travesty! I asked her a few years ago if she could bring them back, but she said she’d lost the recipe. I may have torn her kitchen apart while screaming, “YOU LOST THE RECIPE!?!?!?!?!?!?!” I also may have cried. Point is…she never did find that recipe.
**Are you reading this mom? Feeling guilty yet?
In 2016 I started a quest to recreate those perfect little peanut butter balls. I tried recipe after recipe trying to find that perfect balance of peanut butter and chocolate but had zero success. A few recipes came close but just weren’t right…weren’t what I remembered. Pinterest was a huge help since there were a million and one peanut butter ball recipes—although now they were called buckeyes. And who knows…maybe that’s the issue. Maybe because they were called “buckeyes” my mind was telling me they weren’t right. Maybe simply because I knew the recipe was lost did I reject every recipe I tried…maybe I’d raised mom’s peanut butter balls to such a level that they were a figment of my imagination. Whatever the case, it looked like my future was going to be peanut-butter-ball-less. Sad!
About a year ago, my mom cleaned out her kitchen and asked me if I wanted all the cooking magazines she’d been collecting for years. I jumped at the opportunity and she handed them over. I spent about three weeks going through each magazine looking for treasures and found quite a few. Some of those older recipes are classics and just can’t be beat. Then it happened…
I was in the middle of an old tattered Better Homes and Garden magazine when I saw it. The page was worn and yellowed. And while the words and pictures had begun to fade, there was no mistaking what I saw: Right there in front of my eyes I was holding the magic “Peanut Butter Ball” recipe. I let out a little scream and Adrian came running into the room to see what was wrong…I held up the recipe and had the biggest smile on my face. His reaction wasn’t what I thought it should be, but he’s not really a sweets guy, so I let it slide. It didn’t matter anyway…I was excited enough for the both of us. I had found mom’s peanut butter ball recipe.
I decided to compare it to the million and one recipes on Pinterest to see what my mom’s secret ingredient was and realized that they were all identical to the recipe in the magazine. My mom had been making buckeyes for years and while I was wallowing in my sorrow, I’d had the recipe at my fingertips since the first person posted their buckeye recipe on Pinterest. Isn’t that nice?!
Well, I decided to make a batch and to my delight and surprise, they were delicious. Just as delicious as I remembered. I’ve made them eight times since discovering that recipe and I’ll make them for many more years to come. I even experimented and made a buckeye fudge—putting everything in a square cake pan was SO much easier than rolling each peanut butter ball and dipping each ball in chocolate.
Either way you make these beauties, you will not regret it.
BUCKEYES (Peanut Butter Balls)
1 ½ cups creamy peanut butter, get a really good peanut butter if you can. It is the star of this recipe after all.
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla, I use vanilla bean paste and it adds the most amazing vanilla flavor to the mixture.
4 cups powdered sugar
16 oz. good chocolate, I use dark chocolate, but semi sweet works perfectly as well.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the peanut butter and butter until smooth. Stir in the vanilla. Turn your mixer on low and add the powdered sugar, one cup at a time. Mix between each cup to ensure the mixture is combined and smooth.
Roll the mixture into 1-inch balls, place on parchment lined baking sheet and place in freezer to chill for one hour.
Melt the chocolate in a microwave safe bowl for 1 ½ minutes, stirring every 30 seconds.
Dip your peanut butter balls three fourths of the way in the chocolate. Place dipped balls back onto the parchment lined baking sheet and let sit until chocolate has set.
Leftover balls can be stored in the fridge or freezer (although I don’t predict you’ll have any leftover)
BUCKEYE FUDGE
Follow recipe above but instead of rolling your peanut butter mixture into 1-inch balls, spread mixture in an even layer into a parchment lined 9×9 cake pan and place in the freezer to chill for one hour. Once the peanut butter has chilled, pour the melted chocolate on top and spread in an even layer. Once set, remove from cake pan and slice into squares (or just dig right into the pan with a fork)
