From my mom’s youngest sister and definitely a Christmas Eve family tradition

For about a shoebox full:

1 ½ c peanut butter
1 c butter/margarine
2c powdered sugar
24 oz semi-sweet baking chocolate
¼ box paraffin wax

For about 200:

1 – 500 g jar peanut butter
1 ½ lb. butter/margarine
6 c powdered sugar
72 oz chocolate
1/2 box paraffin wax

Mix and chill 1st three ingredients in refrigerator about two hours until firm. Roll into balls. (If they get too sticky and hard to roll, put remaining batter back in the fridge for half an hour then try again.) Melt chocolate and wax in a double boiler and whisk until smooth. Using a toothpick, pick up each buckeye and dip it in the chocolate, then place on a baking sheet covered in waxed paper. Put entire sheet into freezer. Once frozen, place in cheery Christmas tins or Ziploc bags or whatever you like until Christmas.

Notes:
Use the first proportions if this is your first time, but go for the 200 if you’re a chocolate lover. You won’t regret it. After that first batch, I made the tripled batch a permanent addition to this recipe.

The only tricky part about this recipe is the chocolate – if it’s too hot when you start the dipping process, it will just run off the buckeye and someone will get short changed. Just give it a minute or two to cool, then try again. I set the buckeye and toothpick combo down together and use a new toothpick for the new one until I’ve done about ten, then I start taking the first out and re-using them. That way the chocolate has cooled a bit to allow me to get the toothpick out cleanly. But when you’re doing 200 buckeyes, your chocolate can also get too cold and gloppy and un-dippable. Lightly heat it again until it’s back to the consistency you like.

Oh, and I’ve been told that around holiday time some stores have baking chocolate with wax already in it, though I can’t find it up here. Just be sure to what you are buying. If your chocolate has wax, don’t add more. But if it doesn’t, the little bit of wax added in holds the chocolate on nicely.

We usually have a bit of chocolate leftover, so be prepared. Really, that’s the fun part – we break out the raisins and/or unsalted peanuts and pretzels. The kids can help with this and get a treat out of it, not to mention Mecandes eats the only raisins he’ll touch all year. Funny how chocolate makes anything delectable.

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