My Mother-In-Law's Peanut Butter Balls

I just spent a glorious 5 days with my in-laws. And I mean that for real. I realize a lot of people aren't lucky enough to have really awesome in-laws. I am that lucky. When I go to my MIL's house, I always feel welcome and happy and stress free. It's a good change from normal life.

We always go up right before actual Christmas so we can do our celebrations with them and then be home for Santa's big visit. When I got there, we had some work to do to prepare for the festivities. One of these things was to make the Peanut Butter Balls.

We can't have Christmas up there without the Peanut Butter Balls.

While they can be a little tedious to make with regard to time, they are actually really simple to make.

Ingredients for balls*:

• 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1 box powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter (we use Reese peanut butter for this)
• 1 cup coconut
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 sticks margarine, melted
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Mix all of the above together, adding the butter last. Use your hands. It's more fun.

Ingredients for chocolate:

• 1/2 block of paraffin wax (we used Gulf Wax)
• 1 6oz. package of semi-sweet chocolate morsels

Melt the wax and chocolate in a double boiler or pot on pot.

Pot on Pot Boiler

How to "assemble" the peanut butter balls:

Rolled Peanut Butter Balls

• Pinch off a small amount of peanut butter mixture and roll it into a ball in the palm of your hand. It shouldn't be any wider than a quarter, really. Although, I guess the size can be up to you. We made 4 batches at once and had well over a hundred peanut butter balls. The smaller you roll, the more there are.
• Drop each ball into the melted chocolate mixture, rolling it around until it's covered.
• Remove the ball with a slotted spoon so the extra chocolate can drip back into the pot
• Lay your peanut butter balls on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper so they can dry. Drying won't take long.
• Store your peanut butter balls in a sealed container until ready to enjoy.

Chocolatey Goodness!

They are seriously sinful and yummy. All weekend, I'd watch people popping these things in their mouths. How can you not love a peanut butter ball?!

*I suspect you can leave some of these ingredients out for those who can't have, say, nuts or coconut, and these would still be just as yummy.

Slow Cooker Apples(auce)

My mother recently spent the weekend in the Appalachian mountains for her birthday, and while there she got her hands on some apples. Not just some apples. Massive amounts of apples. Pink Lady apples to be exact. Her garage has boxes and boxes of pretty pink lady apples spilling out of them.

The problem: My mother doesn't cook. She's more of a "heat-it-up" kind of woman. So, she told me I could have full access to all of these apples.

Recently, I came across an applesauce recipe that I thought was pretty interesting, particularly because it was made in a slow cooker. But, I'm not a huge fan of applesauce. It's the consistency. Something about it freaks me out. So I've been trying to figure out how I can work with these apples without making traditional, mashed up applesauce.

Behold!

This is, of course, before the cooking process. I'm not sure what to call it. Granola Cored Apples? 

Anyway, here's the information.

Ingredients:

• 6 medium sized apples of your choosing
• 1/2 c light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granola
• 1/4 cup cranberries
• 1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice*
• 1/4 cup orange juice

Process:

1. Combine brown sugar, granola, cranberries, and pumpkin pie spice in a bowl
2. Wash your apples thoroughly and then halve them going side to side**
3. Core the halves using a sharp paring knife. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get all the middle bits out.
4. Put the two halves back together, so that it looks like an apple again, and fill the cored middle with your granola mixture.
5. Place the filled apples in your slow cooker
6. Pour orange juice in the bottom of your slow cooker
7. Cook on high for 2 hours and then on warm for 2 hours.

You can then spoon each full apple directly out onto individual serving dishes. Serve with a scoop of Vanilla Bean ice cream.

I can't even explain to you how good this is. It's restaurant quality good. It's close-your-eyes-and-purr good. It's why-did-I-serve-this-in-my-kids-plastic-bowl good.

*If you don't have pumpkin pie spice, you will need 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp ground cloves.

**If you have an apple corer, you don't necessarily have to halve your apples. I halve mine for two reasons. First, I don't have a corer. Second, that little break up of apple allows the granola mixture to kind of seep in between the two halves, which I think spices them up more.