I’ve been playing around in the kitchen a bit (though I gladly concede the title of best cook in the family to my sister). Trawling around the web, I came across a recipe for chocolate-covered s’more balls (or reindeer balls if you’re feeling dirty 😉 ). After making some adjustments to the original recipe, I’ve brought these in to the office several times and they’ve been a big hit.
- 1 large jar (13 oz) Marshmallow Creme/Fluff
- 1 packet of graham crackers
- 1.5 cup mini chocolate chips
- 1/3 cup peanut butter (opt.)
- 1 bag of 60% cocoa chocolate chips – Gihardelli is great
(I usually halve the recipe with the small (7oz) jar of fluff and 2 heaping tablespoons of peanut butter, but that’s up to your self-control.)
Crush the graham crackers in a Ziploc bag with a rolling pin into fine crumbs (a few millimeters in size at most).
Dump the fluff into a large bowl and microwave for 15-30 seconds to soften it (don’t go too long or it will melt). Fold in the graham crackers and the (optional, but come on!) peanut butter. By this point, you should be able to fold in the mini chocolate chips without them melting. Then, stick the bowl in the freezer for about 5 minutes to firm it up a bit.
Pull it out and form the mix into balls of about 1″ diameter. Optionally refreeze for 20 minutes.
In smallish batches (about 1/4 at a time), melt the cocoa chips in the microwave. Heat it in short bursts (20-30 seconds) and stir often.
Drop the frozen balls into the melted chocolate, completely coat, then use a pair of forks to transfer to a foil-lined tray. You can either do a thick coat to start and use any remaining to fill in any gaps once they’re on the sheet, or you can coat, cool, and re-coat (thicker and smoother shell, but you may need some extra chocolate).
Here’s the slightly odd part. Harden in the freezer for an hour. Then, allow to come back to room temperature (a few hours); at this point, the chocolate coating melts very easily. So, refreeze for another 6 hours, then bring it back to room temp (or store in the fridge if you want). Through some process I don’t fully understand, the coating is far less prone to melting after this second freezing cycle.
Serve at room temperature (they are too hard if you pull them straight from the fridge, and impossible if you pull them from the freezer). They actually keep fine in a Tupperware container on the counter – they will be gone long before they go bad or melt 🙂 (just keep them out of the sun).