In honor of the Staggs, I made this again.

Prep Time | 45 minutes |
Cook Time | 10 minutes |
Passive Time | 30 minutes |
Servings |
people
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- .75 cup peanut butter creamy not chunky
- .25 cup butter soft as puppy bellies
- .5 teaspoon vanilla extract try not to use it as perfume, which I totally did in high school
- 2 cups confectioner's sugar
- 6 oz chocolate chips semi sweet
- 2 tbsp shortening
Ingredients
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- FInd a baking sheet. Line it with wax paper. Think about whether if you were really desperate you could melt crayons and use that. Hope you are never that desperate for wax paper.
- Find a bowl. TAKE OFF YOUR BLING! Mix peanuts butter, confectioners' sugar and butter and vanilla WITH YOUR HANDS! Worry that this is way too tactile for you. Think about how clean it is to write fiction compared to this. Vow to never whine about your job again.
- Mix that stuff until the dough is smooth-looking like a sleazy man under the dim lights of a hotel bar in a small town in Maine. I don't know where that came from. Worry about your thought process. Does wax paper give off fumes that cause hallucinations or maybe bring up repressed memories? Anyways, shape the dough into little balls. Each should be about 2 teaspoons of dough. Put those balls on the waxed paper and shove it into the refrigerator.
- Find the stove. On the stove put water into a pan and make it simmer. Above that simmering pan put a bowl or another pan. In that top pan melt the chocolate with the shortening. Stir it. When it's smooth take it off the stove.
- Take the balls out of the fridge. Put toothpicks in the ball. Dip ball into chocolate. Put balls back onto our good friend, wax paper. Do this with every single ball. Put the pan of chocolate balls into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Rejoice. Try not to think about wax paper shortages, sleazy men in hotel bars, or the fact that your hands are going to forever smell like peanut butter.
You can put the toothpicks in the balls before you put them in the fridge or after you take them out.
Don't forget to take the toothpicks out before you give people the buckeyes!
I am not a baker. I’m more of a cook.
Shaun legitimately said to me, “I’ve never seen anyone cook like you. You’re so good.”
And I said, “What about your mom and aunts and stuff?”
And he said, “Yeah. They were good cooks.”
And I said, “What’s different then?”
And he said, “Well, they follow directions.”
He quickly started laughing because he realized how mean that sounded. So, we’re still married somehow. I’m not sure how.
Anyway. I’m not so good at following directions and baking? Baking usually requires that. So Buckeye Balls are one of my go-to recipes because they are easy and because one of my friends hoards them when I make them for him.
There’s no better compliment than when one of your friends covets, hides, and hoards your food.
WRITING NEWS
IN THE WOODS – READ AN EXCERPT, PREORDER NOW!
My next book, IN THE WOODS, appears in July with Steve Wedel. It’s scary and one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Buzz Books for Summer 2019. There’s an excerpt of it there and everything! But even cooler (for me) they’ve deemed it buzz worthy! Buzz worthy seems like an awesome thing to be deemed!
You can preorder this bad boy, which might make it have a sequel. The sequel would be amazing. Believe me, I know. It features caves and monsters and love. Because doesn’t every story?

ART NEWS
You can buy limited-edition prints and learn more about my art here on my site.

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