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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Peanut Butter Balls

Dare I utter the words Christmas before Halloween? With each passing year my Christmas baking starts earlier and earlier. This year I blame it on Meaghan well maybe Monica too. You see our good friend Monica was getting ready for this baby shower, which happens to be her FIRST GRANDCHILD (so exciting!). All hands needed to be on deck to help her throw a super great shower for her daughter in law (who is also our really great friend). The three of us got together to make the shower invitations and as we sat chatting, Meaghan couldn't get Christmas off her brain. she wanted to know what our traditions were, what we baked, what parties we were planning. OK, OK yes we even had the Christmas music going....in October. This is when it all came out that Monica was going to make PB Balls for the baby shower. Of course we had to help her out with that too, 'cause that's what great friends do right. Then it turned into lets triple the batch and make them for Christmas while we're at it. There, now you know how Christmas baking came to be in October. Back to the tutorial for making PB Balls.

Peanut Butter Balls

2 2/3 Cups Peanut Butter
1 Cup Butter
4 Cups Icing Sugar
2 Cups Rice Crispies

Chocolate Coating

12 oz Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips
3-4 TBSP Wax Pellets (I know it helps keep the chocolate hard)

The first thing your going to want to do is melt the chocolate chips and the wax pellets in a double boiler. If you don't have one just use a heat safe mixing bowl over a pot with water in it. We put the stove on Med until the water heated up and then we turned it down to Med-Low. The reason you want to do this first is that even though the chocolate chips melt quickly it takes longer for the wax pellets to completely melt and mix in properly.

Next your going to cream together the butter and peanut butter well. Then add the icing sugar and rice crispies. At first it will look pretty powdery but eventually you will get it to look the way it should.
Roll out the peanut butter mixture into balls of roughly the same size. Set them on parchment paper, on a cookie sheet. This makes clean up way easier you'll see why soon. Then place them in the fridge for a good hour so they chill and become hard.


Here's Vanna, I mean Meaghan cheerfully dipping the chilled PB balls into the chocolate. You see two chocolate bowls going as we had tripled the recipe and needed a ton of chocolate to get them all done. I believe we got close to 100 PB balls out of the whole thing.

There are two spoons going as you need to roll them to get the excess chocolate to drip off otherwise it will gather around the bottom of the PB ball as it hardens.
These look really great if you serve them in a silver or gold mini cup cake foil. I can't wait to sink my teeth into these at Christmas time. As a working mother who also has a family business I need to prepare early so I too can enjoy Christmas and have a stress free Holiday Season. Next on my Christmas baking list is Pumpkin Jelly roll.
In case you don't already know her this is Monica, she's the one semi responsible for Christmas baking in Oct and she's also the one who got me into canning my own salsa. That stuff is liquid gold. I can't seem to bring myself to buying the store stuff. I'll show you how to can salsa some other time.

5 comments:

  1. WARNING: These peanut butter balls are EVIL and will haunt you if you make extra and let them hang out in your freezer!! Trust me, I speak from experience! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!

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  2. Next on our Christmas baking list is Oreo Truffles... mint AND regular as well as Spritz cookies. I bought a cookie press and can't WAIT to try it out! EVERY Grandmother needs a cookie press...well at least I think so!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mmmmm....I haven't had peanut butter balls in years! My mom used to make them every Christmas. Those and meringues with chocolate chips, chocolate haystacks,....Shouldn't have read this post before eating breakfast!! Love the pics of Meaghan & Monica. Intrigued by the Oreo truffles!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Are there any houses for sale in your neighbourhood? I need closer to this action!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Adrienne I would love to have you closer to the action and my kids would love to play with yours too.

    ReplyDelete

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