Having been born and raised in Nebraska, I had never heard of buckeye candies until after law school, when a friend who was working in Ohio brought some to D.C. These little peanut butter and chocolate confections are an Ohio specialty, made to resemble the nut of a buckeye tree -- the buckeye being both the Ohio state tree and the nickname for Ohio State's sports teams.
My friend Adam makes delicious buckeyes, and the other day I wanted to finally try making some myself -- but I had misplaced the buckeye recipe that Adam gave me some time ago. However, I knew that there was a buckeye recipe in Baked Explorations, and so I decided to give it a try. The peanut butter centers are a mixture of cream cheese, peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs, powdered sugar, and melted butter. You form the mixture into balls (I know the recipe makes exactly a quart of filling, because I used a #50 scoop and was able to make precisely 50 centers), and dip them in melted dark chocolate (I used Ghiradelli 72% "Twilight Delight" bars). Using a spiral dipping tool, I was able to do a relatively neat job dipping the candies and creating nice-looking buckeyes with a pretty circle of exposed peanut butter filling. The buckeyes need some time in the refrigerator for the chocolate to set up.
There lovely little morsels are rich and absolutely delicious. If you like peanut butter and chocolate together, there's nothing not to like about them. The graham cracker crumbs give the centers a substantial but not heavy texture. It's been a few months since I've tasted one, but I seem to recall that Adam's buckeyes -- which contain crushed Rice Krispies instead of graham cracker crumbs -- have a lighter texture. The peanut butter centers were not too sweet, and I liked the bitterness of the dark chocolate I used for the coating. Unfortunately, these treats require refrigeration, so they're not easy to tote around, and they are also difficult to handle without leaving fingerprints in the chocolate (I used vinyl food service gloves to solve this problem). Tom tells me that he liked to eat buckeyes straight out of the freezer as a child, and I can imagine that they would also be delicious frozen.
The "Buckeye Battle Cry" is one of Ohio State's fight songs; it's about football and winning and Ohio smashing through to victory. But these buckeyes are so tasty that they inspire my own personal Buckeye Battle Cry along the lines of "Peanut Butter + Chocolate Rocks!," or more succinctly, "YUM!!"
Recipe: "Buckeyes" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
My friend Adam makes delicious buckeyes, and the other day I wanted to finally try making some myself -- but I had misplaced the buckeye recipe that Adam gave me some time ago. However, I knew that there was a buckeye recipe in Baked Explorations, and so I decided to give it a try. The peanut butter centers are a mixture of cream cheese, peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs, powdered sugar, and melted butter. You form the mixture into balls (I know the recipe makes exactly a quart of filling, because I used a #50 scoop and was able to make precisely 50 centers), and dip them in melted dark chocolate (I used Ghiradelli 72% "Twilight Delight" bars). Using a spiral dipping tool, I was able to do a relatively neat job dipping the candies and creating nice-looking buckeyes with a pretty circle of exposed peanut butter filling. The buckeyes need some time in the refrigerator for the chocolate to set up.
The "Buckeye Battle Cry" is one of Ohio State's fight songs; it's about football and winning and Ohio smashing through to victory. But these buckeyes are so tasty that they inspire my own personal Buckeye Battle Cry along the lines of "Peanut Butter + Chocolate Rocks!," or more succinctly, "YUM!!"
Recipe: "Buckeyes" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.
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