The Goose is Getting Fat

Jon and I are entirely prepared for this holiday weekend. The planning, shopping, and baking are all complete. We will be mooching from our massive family for the entirety of Christmas day--his aunt's for breakfast, his Mom's for lunch, his Dad's for dinner, and my parent's for dessert, or more commonly known as the after-party where you may or may not munch on cookies and pies while enjoying a hilarious game of Taboo or Cranium. Yes, my family can't get enough of the guessing games.

My contribution to the baking this year turned out to be chocolate and peanut butter buckeyes. I had never made them before, but have very fond memories of a friend's mother handing one each to my bother and I, and we popped the little ball of peanut-buttery goodness into our mouths, rolled our eyes into the back of our heads, and unanimously exclaimed "MMmmm!" And because I'm always looking for that same reaction from my family and friends when I try something new I decided to give them a shot.

I didn't pay much attention to ingredients before heading out to the grocery store. I saw that I had to pick up some more peanut butter, butter, and powdered sugar, and remained oblivious to the overall amounts needed. So when I finally set all of the ingredients out on the counter-top and began reading the recipe you can imagine my surprise and insurmountable disgust when I saw that I had to use 16 oz. of butter--as in 1 entire pound of butter, or the entire 15 oz. tub I purchased plus another ounce! I continued reading and found that I also needed 2 and a half pounds of powered sugar which was, again, the entire bag that I purchased plus an extra cup! The thought of all that butter and sugar and how extremely unhealthy these little suckers must be made me walk away for a while, call my mother to make sure that I wasn't crazy and that 16 oz. really did equal one pound, and stop to ask myself if I really felt the need to give my family death by peanut butter and chocolate?

Apparently the answer was yes, because curiosity got the best of me and I mixed it all together. I spent the next hour rolling the dough into 150 tiny balls and stacking cookie sheet upon cookie sheet into my refrigerator. I felt a little better knowing that the recipe made so many--that way the butter and sugar were a little more dispersed than I had originally imagined.

I have since dipped them all in chocolate, making them resemble real buckeyes, stored them in three separate tupperware containers and did my best at cautioning Jon from thinking of them as a quick and easy snack. The last thing I need is to find out that my husband ate a whole tub of butter and bag of powdered sugar this Christmas season. I will be divvying them out on our Monday travels. I do not, however, know that I will ever make them again. They taste good, but I suppose it's sort of like fast food--once you know how it's made it doesn't sound so appetizing anymore.