- Hello everyone, you're watching Preppy Kitchen
where I, John Kanell, teach you
how to make delicious home cooked dishes
for your family and friends.
Today, we're making buckeyes,
a delicious no-bake treat with peanut butter, chocolate,
a little bit of sugar and a lot of bit of fun.
Let's get started.
We're having some friends over later today,
so I thought these would be a really fun
after dinner snack that I can make well in advance
and not have to worry about any host duties in the meantime.
All right, so one cup of peanut butter.
To help the peanut butter release easier,
I sprayed the inside with some baking spray.
Pop, comes right out.
Not gonna say this isn't messy, though.
Five tablespoons of unsalted butter;
that is about maybe 60 grams.
We're gonna cream this up.
Gonna add in a teaspoon of vanilla right now.
We're gonna scrape the bowl down and sweeten it up
and stiffen it up with some powdered sugar.
However, I wanna tell I learned the hard way
that you really have to scrape the bowl down
with that powdered sugar,
because you'll find little pockets here and there,
and they do not make for beautiful little buckeyes.
A little more mixing.
Okay, that's nice and homogenous.
My neck smells like vanilla, which is wonderful.
And I'm gonna add in my first cup of powdered sugar.
Start on low, increase the speed.
And now we're adding in our second cup of powdered sugar.
Let's scrape that bowl down.
Scrape down, let's keep mixing.
You really wanna beat the powdered sugar in there
so it's packed in
and you're ending up with a really workable,
almost Play-Doh-like or clay-like mixture.
This'll be a great buckeye because you can roll it up,
and, when you chill it, it'll hold its shape well.
Okay, all right, to make our little
kind of Reese's Pieces buckeyes, what we're gonna do
is grab about two tablespoons, no, no, no,
two teaspoons of our peanut butter mixture,
which should be 20 grams, 19 is fine,
and then roll it out between your hands.
Place it on your baking sheet.
Continue the process until they're all done.
If you get peanut butter on your hands, wash 'em off.
You could also dust your hands with powdered sugar,
which I have done on and off, and it works, too.
But basically, wash your hands.
And it's not because it's impairing your ability to roll,
but, as you get stuff on your palms,
it gives a texture,
it'll have like a bumpy texture to the balls,
so word to the wise.
And, also, just by the by, full disclosure,
I made a batch of these yesterday.
Guess what I didn't do?
I didn't scrape the bowl down so, on the top,
they were kind of softer than I would've wanted.
But then, on the bottom, once I got there,
it was tons of powdered sugar that didn't get mixed in,
so they were just rock-hard and too soft.
So I'm making a little bit of an assembly line
and just weighing them all out.
You totally don't have to be this anal, but this is me.
Hello, I'm John.
And then we're gonna roll them out
after they're all measured out,
just because it gets kind of messy
picking out the dough with your hands.
It's a great project for kids.
Make sure they wash their hands first.
It's also a fun rainy day project.
Right kids? Right, dad.
Roll, roll, roll, roll, roll.
And once they're all rolled out,
you're gonna pop them into the fridge
for at least half an hour.
Let them really firm up,
because you'll be dipping them in warm chocolate.
And by rolling them, you're really
warming them up with your hands.
I have these on a baking tray just for convenience.
We're not baking them.
It's a no-bake treat.
These are going into the fridge
for at least half an hour,
at which point you'll be ready to dip 'em.
My buckeyes are almost done chilling,
so it's time to make that chocolate dipping situation.
Two cups of semisweet chocolate.
Mine's in chip form.
And to make it a bit more easily dippable,
we're gonna add in two teaspoons of coconut oil.
I think it's a bit more traditional to use shortening,
but I am not living that shortening life.
Nope, not gonna happen.
You could also use butter, I suppose, too.
All right, so we're just gonna microwave this
on short 30-second bursts
at maybe 70%, 60% or so,
or you could pop it onto a double boiler,
but I don't got time for that.
In you go.
I'll be back when it's melted.
A couple of 30-second bursts,
and this is getting there.
You wanna give it a bit of a stir,
because the bottom will get really hot,
the center's ice-cold.
Does that sound familiar to you?
Every day with a microwave.
When you're melting chocolate,
the cardinal rule is not to melt the chocolate.
Here's what I mean by that.
You can't just keep the chocolate on heat
until it's all melted,
because you're probably gonna be burning it.
So what you wanna do is heat the chocolate
until it's mostly melted,
and then set it aside and give it a stir.
Right now, I have too many unmelted chunks still,
but I'm very close.
I wanted to mention that you're gonna melt it
until it's almost all melted,
not until it's all melted
because then bad things happen, especially,
especially with that finicky beast, white chocolate.
I mostly melted my chocolate, set it aside,
stirred it, and now, silky, wonderful,
and perfect for dipping.
I'm actually gonna transfer this into a glass
because I wanna be able to dip
my buckeyes more easily
and not have to move them around.
Grab those peanut butter balls out of the fridge,
along with several toothpicks.
Now it's time for the fun part, the dipping.
Okay, ahhh, I'm sorry, peanut butter.
I'm sorry, peanut butter ball,
you didn't do anything to me.
Now we're gonna dip this in.
Oh my gosh, that's so pretty and sensual at the same time.
Pop that back on and release carefully.
Skewer that peanut butter ball.
Dip it in.
Remove it.
Enjoy the beautiful sheen
of chocolate as you do that, so pretty.
You can take any excess and just wipe it off like that.
And there we go.
Those holes get covered up
with a little spatula knife, so don't worry about them.
Dip.
If you're wondering why they're called buckeyes,
it's because there are things called buckeyed peas,
and this is what they look like,
they actually look like this.
Don't try and speed this process up
by putting them in the freezer.
Again, I learned this the hard way.
Because what happens is they sweat
when they're coming back to room temperature,
and it's a whole mess.
It means the chocolate doesn't stick on properly.
I spent too long running my big mouth off,
so my balls of peanut butter have warmed up a bit
and are not as compliant as I'd like with my toothpick.
There we go.
Okay, they are almost done.
Just pop them into the fridge to set,
maybe 20 or 30 minutes,
and then they'll be ready to enjoy when we come back.
So my buckeyes are all set up and chilled, look at that.
But we have to deal with those pesky holes,
so let me show you how to do that.
Use a small knife and just scrape it together.
You can even use your clean finger
to tap it down, if you want.
A little bit of baking or no-bake Photoshop.
If you like these buckeyes,
check out my easy and no-bake dessert playlist.
I've curated a few of my recipes
that are either no-bake or super easy, done in a snap,
and you're going to love them.
My buckeyes are all done.
They can live in the fridge until the guests come over.
But I have to eat one for you.
It'll be the ugly one, I'll make that sacrifice.
Sorry, I was thinking about I could eat the rest of this
while doing the scene, but keep it moving.
I can't, I'll put it down.
Okay, that was really good.
It was like a Reese's Pieces
with much more, like a double stuffed Reese's Pieces.
If you like my recipes, hit that Like button and subscribe,
and I'll see you in the next video.