Dear Lillie: Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! A little while ago the girls and I made some chocolate peanut butter truffles and I thought I would share the recipe for them again (I had shared it a couple of years ago in a Valentine's craft post but thought I would make it easier to find by giving them their own post today). These are one of my all-time favorite snacks that I accidentally stumbled on making back in college and they quickly became a favorite of my whole family. Because I never had a recipe for them this is my closest guess to the amounts of each ingredient:

For the inside:

Butter (1/2 cup)

Brown Sugar (start with 3/4 cup but probably will add more)

Peanut Butter (start with 1/2 cup but may add more)

Vanilla (3/4 teaspoon)

Flour (start with 1/2 cup but definitely WILL add more)

That's it! Now, like I said there are no real measurements I go by so as long as you aren't picky about that they are super easy to make. For this I started with one stick of butter. I popped it in the microwave until it was completely melted. Then I started adding the brown sugar. I think it probably ended up being close to a cup by the time I was done however feel free to add a more or less depending on how sweet you want it. Then add in the peanut butter. I would say we started with about a 1/2 cup but maybe used around 3/4 a cup by the time we were done but again I am not really sure. You do want it to be more peanut buttery than sugary as far as the taste goes. I generally take a little taste at this point and see. If it is too sweet I add a little more peanut butter (you don't want it to be too sweet because they are so rich once you dip them in the chocolate). Then I added around 3/4 teaspoon of vanilla and stirred it again. And now for the last part. To start with I dumped in about 1/2 cup of flour. I stirred it all in and then just kept adding a 1/4 cup at a time until it was a nice consistency to roll into little balls. Now roll them and place them on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. (Make sure you put them on wax paper - it will make picking them up after they are coated in chocolate soooo much easier!)

(These next photos are all from before Lola was even born - sorry for the huge watermarks!)

Now for the dipping!

2 - 4 cups of chocolate chips

That's it! I generally start with about a cup to a cup and a half of chocolate bits and just dump them into something that is safe for the microwave. For this batch I put it in for 45 seconds then took it out and stirred the chocolate chips and put it in for another 45 seconds and stirred again and it was ready to go. (You may have to keep doing it for a little bit longer depending on how your microwave works. Just don't put it in for longer than a minute at a time without stirring it or the bottom ones may burn - I've definitely had that happen before!) I coat as many as I can and then just melt more chocolate as needed. I find using something like this makes it pretty easy and I don't waste as much chocolate as I do when I use a bigger bowl.

To coat the peanut butter balls you just drop them in one at a time and just spoon the chocolate over them.

As we finished dipping each one we just placed it back on the wax paper. Once they were all done we popped them in the fridge. They generally harden within an hour and then that is also where we store them. They aren't nearly as good if you don't keep them in the fridge!