These are not your ordinary chocolate peanut butter balls found on holiday platters.

Inside these delicious Christmas treats, you’ll find peanut butter with walnut pieces, chopped red, green, or both cherries dipped in luscious milk chocolate.

Today, let me show you how easy it is to make chocolate peanut butter balls ahead of the holiday fiasco.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls have been a holiday tradition in Mrs.CBB’s family since she was a little girl.

She would help her nanny make these peanut butter balls covered in chocolate for the Christmas Holidays.

When her nanny could no longer make this recipe for peanut butter balls, she passed it down to Mrs.CBB.

We have made these chocolate peanut butter balls together for the past 11 years since we married.

I’ll warn you right now; it’s hard to stop at one or even three chocolate peanut butter balls.

The entire holiday season has platters of Christmas cookies on the dining room table, and everyone helps themselves.

The great thing about this peanut butter balls recipe is that it is relatively inexpensive and no-bake.

If you don’t have an oven and want or need to bring a homemade Christmas treat to a party, you could make these on the stovetop.

It can get messy when melting chocolate and dipping the Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls, also known as Buckeyes.

Alternatively, you can switch the recipe up, and instead of peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate, you could make white chocolate-covered peanut butter balls instead.

You could do both; they would look lovely on a tray or gift-wrapped for your mates.

If you don’t fancy peanut butter, how about using Almond Butter or alternative nut butter?

This recipe is quite versatile as long as you have a nut butter that you like.

How Do You Make Peanut Butter?

I didn’t make the peanut butter for this recipe; however, I thought I might talk about how easy it is to make.

Years ago, I remembered when peanut butter would cost $1.99 for a jar; now, it can run upwards of $7.99 kg.

My advice: When you find peanut butter on sale, stock up, or you can buy peanuts in bulk and make it yourself.

Making homemade peanut butter is far healthier than store-bought because you know what goes into it.

Not to mention peanut butter is easy to make in a food processor.

Buy the number of roasted peanuts that you need and put them in a food processor with your oil of choice, salt, and sugar, and whiz away.

If you do not want added sugar, nuts, and peanut butter, add nothing more than just nuts and process it.

I would add oil to make the peanut butter come together like traditional peanut butter.

The oil we use is avocado oil, and we’ve used peanut oil or coconut oil.

If you find peanuts that aren’t roasted, all you do is put them on parchment paper with a bit of oil and salt and roast them in the oven until golden.

Let them cool, then process them as above.

It’s that easy.

How To Make Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Printable Recipe Below- Scroll down.

Our chocolate peanut butter balls recipe has red and green cherries, walnuts, pure vanilla, chopped dates, peanut butter, butter, and icing sugar.

That’s it, not too many ingredients, and the best part is if you don’t like dates, cherries, or nuts, you can leave them out.

You do need the peanut butter, though, haha!

We used a fork, toothpicks, and two boxes of semi-sweet Bakers Chocolate to dip the chocolate peanut butter balls.

In the past, we have used two bags of milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips to coat the chocolate peanut butter balls.

If you are looking for sugar-free chocolate chips, either Lily’s or Krisda’s are the only two we use.

What type of chocolate you buy to coat your peanut butter balls is up to you.

We were fortunate to find Bakers Semi-Sweet Chocolate at Dollarama for only $2 compared to $3.99 at the grocery store.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls: Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of red maraschino cherries chopped small
• 1/2 cup of green maraschino cherries chopped into small pieces
• 1/2 cup of fresh dates chopped small then soaked in water for 10 minutes, then drain (if you don’t like dates, eliminate them)
• 1 cup of peanut butter * yes you can use chunky if you like
• 1 cup chopped walnuts ( make these small so bang about if you have to in a plastic zip bag)- great way to get frustrations out.. beat your nuts!
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar also known as icing sugar
• 4 tablespoons softened butter
• 2 boxes of semi-sweet Bakers Chocolate or Bags of Chocolate Chips

Preparation: Yield Approx: 36 Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

• Chop all of your cherries, dates, and nuts into small pieces and have them ready in bowls
• In your mixing bowl add the peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and icing sugar and stir until combined

• Add the cherries, dates, and walnuts then stir until combined

• Following the completion of the recipe, we take the bowl of raw ingredients and pop them into the refrigerator for about an hour to harden the mix up a bit. It makes it easier to work with the batter when it’s cold.
• Take the bowl out and on parchment-lined baking sheets start rolling small-medium-sized balls uniform in shape. Don’t make them too big as they are meant to be bite-size or two-bite peanut butter balls.

• After you have the balls rolled and on the tray put the tray into a freezer to freeze for about 1 hour.

• When they are frozen you are ready to dip.
• We take a few out of the freezer at a time so they are still frozen when we dip as it yields the best results for us. Drop one into the melted chocolate which you melt in a double boiler or in our case a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water.
• Lower the heat once the chocolate is melted and you can stream it off your spatula. You don’t want to get any water or steam into your chocolate or you risk it seizing up.

• Drop your peanut butter ball inside the chocolate and with your fork gently pick it up (don’t stick the fork in the peanut butter ball) have the ball sit on the fork.
• Stick the toothpick into the top and once the toothpick is secure you can twist the peanut butter ball off with your fingers from side to side on the baking tray lined with parchment paper.

• Once dipped and back on the parchment paper we use a toothpick dipped in chocolate to fill in any gaps that we may have missed and the hole where the toothpick was.

We freeze the peanut butter balls for about 2 hours or until solid.

Take your balls out about 1 hour before serving to bring them to room temperature although we are known to pop them in our mouth straight out of the freezer.

How To Make Holiday Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Recipe Type: Christmas Baking

Author: Mr.CBB

Prep time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours

Serves: 36

These Holiday Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls recipe has been passed down through our family after being made for generations.

Filled with nuts, cherries and delicious peanut butter then dipped in creamy chocolate.

Peanut Butter Balls Ingredients

• 1/2 cup of red maraschino cherries chopped small
• 1/2 cup of green maraschino cherries chopped into small pieces
• 1/2 cup of fresh dates chopped small then soaked in water for 10 minutes then drain (if you don’t like dates eliminate them)
• 1 cup of peanut butter * yes you can use chunky if you like
• 1 cup chopped walnuts ( make these small so bang about if you have to in a plastic zip bag)
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar also known as icing sugar
• 4 tablespoons softened butter
• 2 boxes of semi-sweet Bakers Chocolate or bags of Chocolate Chips

Step-by-Step Instructions Peanut Butter Balls

1. Chop all of your cherries, dates, and nuts into small pieces and have them ready in bowls
2. In your mixing bowl add the peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and icing sugar and stir until combined
3. Add the cherries, dates, and walnuts and stir until combined
4. Take the bowl of raw ingredients and pop them into the refrigerator for about an hour to harden the mix-up a bit. It makes it easier to work with the batter when it’s cold.
5. On parchment-lined baking sheets start rolling small-medium-sized balls uniform in shape.
6. Don’t make them too big as they are meant to be bite-size or two-bite peanut butter balls.
7. After you have the balls rolled and on the tray put the tray into a freezer to freeze for about 1 hour.
8. When they are frozen you are ready to dip.
9. Take a few out of the freezer at a time so they are still frozen when we dip as it yields the best results for us.
10. Drop one into the melted chocolate which you melt in a double boiler or in our case a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water. Use all the chocolate chips or Baker’s Chocolate to melt.
11. Lower the heat once the chocolate is melted and you can stream it off your spatula.
12. You don’t want to get any water or steam into your chocolate or you risk it seizing up.
13. Lightly drop your peanut butter ball inside the chocolate and with your fork gently pick it up (don’t stick the fork in the peanut butter ball) have the ball sit on the fork.
14. Stick the toothpick into the top and once the toothpick is secure you can twist the peanut butter ball off with your fingers from side to side on the baking tray lined with parchment paper.
15. Once dipped and back on the parchment paper we use a toothpick dipped in chocolate to fill in any gaps that we may have missed and the hole where the toothpick was.
16. We freeze the peanut butter balls for about 2 hours or until solid.
17. Take your balls out about 1 hour before serving to bring them to room temperature although we are known to pop them in our mouth straight out of the freezer.

That’s all my friends!

I hope you give our Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls a try and let me know what you think.

Next week we move on to super-easy to make Holiday Coconut Balls.

Discussion Question: What are some of your favorite holiday treats?

Related Christmas Recipes

• Mr.CBB’s Family Holiday Snowballs…Mmmm
• Mr. CBB’s Festive Coconut Balls
• Christmas Mincemeat part 1
• Christmas Mincemeat part 2
• Festive Christmas Cake
• Old-fashioned Gingerbread Cookies
• Frosty Christmas pudding

Subscribe To Canadian Budget Binder

Share to...