Buckeyes are a little piece of heaven rolled into a ball. I would describe them as mini Reese’s Pieces…in other words absolutely delicious and addictive. I may be biased given Reese’s Pieces are my favorite candy bar, but I’ve had enough people tell me how wonderful these are to know I’m not alone.
As much as I love to cook and bake, I love easy recipes. It’s nice when a recipe doesn’t call for ingredients so exotic you can’t find them at your local grocery store, or it has so many steps you start questioning your own sanity for choosing such a recipe. Buckeyes require minimal ingredients, minimal steps, and no oven. This translates to my type of recipe.
I don’t have any children but this is one of those recipes that would be totally fun to make with kids. I’m not sure how much of the dough would actually end up being rolled up into balls as oppose to their tummies, but it’s totally age appropriate and doable for young children.
A recipe like this is also great to make if you have to make large amounts of cookies. One batch of these makes many balls.
The tops are not covered with chocolate, so as to look like buckeyes.
mmmmm…can you taste them?
Recipe
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon of salt
3 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
Chocolate bark or candy melts for coating
Directions
1. Mix peanut butter, butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt either by hand or with a mixer.
2. Roll dough into balls and place on a wax lined cookie sheet.
3. Refrigerate until the balls are hard or freeze for a couple hours (I recommend freezing. It makes the balls much easier to handle when coating with chocolate).
4. Melt chocolate in small batches. Candy melts and chocolate bark melt within 60 seconds in a microwave. Using a long wooden toothpick or skewer, dip half of the ball into the melted chocolate. Leave the tops exposed so they can look like buckeyes. Return the balls on to the wax paper. Remove toothpick. If the holes bothers you, just smooth it over with your finger.
5. Let cool in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving. This allows the chocolate to set and harden.
Enjoy!
