Christmas Cookie Exchange

One of my favorite traditions for the ladies at Discovery, is our annual Christmas Party and Cookie Exchange. It's very fun and festive so it always gets me in the Christmas Spirit! I decided to try out a new recipe I had never made before for the swap this year. One of my favorite treats, are Buckeyes. The gift shop inside cracker barrel always sells little packages of the yummiest Buckeyes ever!! On our last few road trips, I have made a habit out of stopping to pick some up (and usually making myself sick from eating way too many!!). So this year I thought I'd give it a try. I finally feel like I have some time to try out new recipes and such..at least until June :) then I'm back to square one!!

Here is the recipe I decided to use:
(There are many variations, for example, some people like to use rice krispies in them to make them crunchy,)

*Buckeyes*

Ingredients:

* 1 1/2 cups peanut butter

*1 cup butter softened

*1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

*6 cups confectioners' sugar

*4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, mix together the peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar. The dough will look dry. Roll into 1 inch balls and place on a waxed paper lined cookie sheet.

2. Press a toothpick into the top of each ball (to be used later as the handle for dipping) and chill in the freezer until firm, about 30 min.

3. Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until smooth.

4. Dip frozen peanut butter balls in chocolate holding onto the toothpick. Leave a small portion of peanut butter showing on top to make them look like Buckeyes. Put back on the cookie sheet and refrigerate until serving.

A few things I found after making them were:

*I doubled the recipe because I wanted to have a lot, but in the future I will do two separate batches. Getting the ingredients to blend becomes a little hard when you're dealing with 12 cups of powdered sugar!!
*I just melted my chocolate chips in a big bowl in the microwave. Every once in a while I would just pop it back in to soften it up some more.
*I also added a chunk of Paraffin wax to my chocolate chips while they were melting to help the chocolate form a nice shell. It worked great!!
*She's not lying when she says the dough will look "dry", it's kinda crumbly so you have to kneed it some in your hands to make a nice smooth ball.
Overall I thought it was a great recipe and mine came out really yummy. I think next time I might try to make them with milk chocolate chips instead because I like them a little better:)

They gave out some prizes for the cookies, and I actually got this adorable little platter!!

It was a super fun night with tons of yummy cookies and games! Can't wait until next year!!