The Recipe from "Regrecipes": Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Ah, yes. The Balls.

If you attended Live Wire's December 14th taping at the Aladdin Theater, you were there to see my mother, the charming and fabulous Sally, take great joy in giving me the what-for in front of 500 people.

That's her above, laughing uproariously after zinging the crap out of me. Watch out, kids! If you don't clean your room, then when you're (ostensibly) a grown-up, your mother might show up on the radio variety show you host and, in the sweetest of ways, tear you a new one. (To mom's right is Shelley Besemann, a therapist, who offered some really helpful advice for surviving the holidays, including multi-purpose one-liners such as, "I love you too much to talk about that right now.")

Anyhoodily doodily, regardless of the destruction that happened in the making of them, these balls are the best thing you'll put in your mouth all year.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls (a.k.a. Buckeyes), courtesy of Sally Hameister

MIX WITH HANDS:
3 cups Rice Krispies
1 stick of butter or margerine (very soft)
1 box (2 cups) confectioner's sugar
2 cups chunky peanut butter

After mixed, chill for one hour. Take out of refrigerator and roll mixture into 1-inch balls. Chill for one more hour.

MELT IN DOUBLE BOILER:
1 large Hershey bar (the BIG one - 8 0z.)
1 6 oz. bag of bittersweet chocolate chips
1/4 to 1/2 bar household paraffin*

Take a spoon and drop balls into above mixture until fully coated and place on wax paper. Refrigerate until set, and serve. Not necessary to keep cookies refrigerated, but recommended.

*Yes, it's wax. It sounds weird, but it keeps the chocolate from melting in your hand. You've eaten wax before, really. It's fine.



Enjoy the balls. And enjoy the back of Sally's Christmas sweater. See how there's real stockings that hang off that thing? This is a woman who loves Christmas.

Thanks, Mom, for zinging me when I needed be zinged. And thanks for making every Christmas in our house the world's largest, tinsel-iest, chocolate-covered-ball of happy holiday cheer. We were the luckiest kids ever.