Buckeyes: Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

About a week ago on The Cottage Mama facebook page I had posed the question "What was everyone's favorite holiday cookie?".  Well, my husband was the first to chime in and said "Buckeyes"! 

And though I had not anticipated on him participating in our daily facebook chatter, I knew that I better get on top of making him his most favorite Christmas cookie!

Buckeyes

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

25-30 individual balls

Ingredients:

1.5 cups creamy peanut butter

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 cups powdered sugar

4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Directions:

Mix the peanut butter, softened butter, vanilla extract and powdered sugar in a large mixing bowl.  Lay a piece of wax paper or parchment paper onto a cookie sheet.  Roll balls of peanut butter mixture and place on cookie sheet.  Dip your hands in water to avoid too much stickiness.  Once you have used up all of your dough and made the balls.  Place them on the cookie sheet in the freezer for about an hour.

Prepare your double-boiler on the stove.  If you do not have a double boiler, fill your saucepan with about 3-4 inches of water and place a heat-proof glass bowl on top.  Place chocolate chips and vegetable oil into the top of your double boiler.  Allow chocolate to melt completely (stirring occassionally).

Next drop balls into chocolate and coat completely.  To make true buckeyes, you leave the top of the peanut butter ball exposed, but I find this to be a little more time consuming, so I just coat them completely.  Place chocolate covered balls back on wax paper on cookie sheet.  Once all balls are coated, return to the freezer for an additional 30 minutes.

Store buckeyes in the refrigerator and remove before serving. Enjoy!

My mother in law adds some paraffin wax to the chocolate mixture, this will thin it out and make it go farther.  Personally, that's just not for me, so I just use the vegetable oil for sort of the same thing.  If you use paraffin, omit the vegetable oil.

I had some extra chocolate left over in my double boiler, so I dropped in a bunch of pretzels to coat them with chocolate as well.  Before the pretzels set, I sprinkled them with fine red sugar and coarse white sugar.

Happy Holiday Cookie Season!