Fat Friday

I have found maybe one of my favorite recipes...EVER. It's a close 2nd to that peanut butter sheet cake. It takes less ingredients, half the time and is slap your momma good.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pretzel Balls
1 1/2 C pretzels
1/2 C creamy peanut butter
1 Tbsp butter, softened
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt
3 Tbsp powdered sugar
1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips

• Crush pretzels into small bits.
• In mixer, combine peanut butter, butter, brown sugar and salt. Mix until all ingredients are completely blended and smooth.
• Add pretzel bits to peanut butter mixture and mix thoroughly.
• Add powdered sugar and, again, mix thoroughly. It should look like this:
• Prepare a chilling tray--a dinner plate covered with waxed paper works well.
• Take about a teaspoon of the peanut butter pretzel mixture into your fingers and gently pat it into a ball with your fingertips. (The powdered sugar will make the peanut butter less sticky, but it's still too sticky to roll well, hence the patting.)
• If the peanut butter starts sticking to your fingers, your fingers are too warm. Run your fingers under cold water for a minute to chill them, and begin rolling again.
• Place the peanut butter balls onto the plate. When you have rolled all the balls, place the entire plate into the refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes.
• After the peanut butter balls have chilled, prepare your chocolate. Pour the chocolate chips into a small microwaveable bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds and stir. If needed, microwave for another 10 seconds and stir again. Continue until the chips are completely melted, which means they stir easily into smooth, fluid chocolate with no lumps.
• Place one peanut butter ball into the melted chocolate and gently roll it around with a fork until completely coated. Remove from the bowl with the fork and place back on the waxed paper plate. Repeat for all other balls. (I found the choc chips made it too rich so I just drizzled (dumped if I'm being honest) the choc. on each one.
• 
• Once all the peanut butter balls are coated in chocolate, return the plate to the refrigerator and chill another 30 minutes.

When they're done, they should look like this:
This recipe makes approximately 22 balls. It is very easy to double, triple, quadruple this recipe.

You will have to muster up some restraint because its hard to only eat one! D is not really a huge fan of peanut butter balls...which is crazy to me. I grew up with my granny fixing them (a ton of them!) at Christmas. They are my favorite. He came home from work curious as to what I was making, tasted it of course, and probably got more excited about this than anything else I've ever made before... in the 6.5 years we've been married. I can't decide if that's an insult to my cooking or compliment for success. Maybe its both, but who cares when you find something this good!



*I got the recipe from this blog. Thank you Marisa!*