Buckeyes, & Other Ohio Nuts

 *WARNING: Actual Recipe Included*

Ingredients

• 3 unnecessarily humungous supermarkets in 3 days (that's 1 a day), voluntarily 

  

  Our regional grocery store is "Giant Eagle." Picture, if you, will a giant eagle. And how that might possibly relate to food.

• Your wallet's magnetic draw towards Kohl's (at least twice), where everything appears basically free
• An evening with your best friends catered entirely by Aldi's Supermarket, which excites you almost as much as learning about Aldi's new products every time you come home
• 1 elevator ride in which an old man tells you that you look like Taylor Swift
• A sip of your very first Great Lakes Brewery Christmas Ale, treated like an initiation into adulthood

  

  No, I didn't have the ice cream. We all know I would've preferred that.

• A very "costly" restaurant with unexpected "steep prices." Like $24 for an entree. Hahahahahahahahaha. Oh... (Did I leave my $17 cocktail in New York?)
• 40°F when you enter your aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner
• 20°F, 2 feet of snow, and a legitimate doubt of your ability to drive to your home 2 minutes away when you leave your aunt's house from Thanksgiving dinner
• 60°F and sweating 2 days later
• Black Friday Shopping including 2, and only 2, stops: The Olive Scene and Swan Creek Candle Company (olive oil & candles, respectively)
• 1 library card that NEVER EXPIRES, which you "lose" about once a year and instead present your ID and thus  NEVER have to replace (Said library is not part of any library system; totally isolated; you'll be a member forever.)

  

  So old.

• A surge of comfort, togetherness, and confidence as you look among the other women standing in the security line at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport
• The feeling of dread as you roll your 12-year-old, army green children's suitcase down the terminal toward the gate boarding for New York City, where, awaiting you, are women decades older and yet decades thinner
  *If for some reason you don't notice this, um, it really should be very obvious due to their casual plane attire of $100 patterned yoga leggings and baggy/strategically drapey black sweaters.
• A fall Sunday in Cleveland, which one can identify by wondering whether the large amount of people in the airport is due to all of these people flying or all of these people watching the Brown's game in the airport bar
  *There are a lot of Browns jerseys and not a lot of movement towards flight gates, so you should lean Browns Backers. 
• Flying on the same airplane as you: 1 couple with a 5'5 man in an oversized & dwarfing Browns jersey and a tiny woman carrying a French bulldog who is also wearing a Browns jersey. Though they zip him into a tote bag that reveals only the dog's head,  you can still tell he's a Browns fan just by the way he's sitting there... waiting for something good to happen... fairly confident it will, but knowing that, in all reality, he could be in this bag forever...

Instructions

As we walked in the 30° cold at 10:30 in the morning on an un-iced and unpopulated sidewalk in Vermillion, OH, my mom exclaims, "Isn't this fun? This is so much fun!" Yeah, right, I thought. But then I realized, counter-arguing my internal monologue: Heck, yeah. Heck yes this is fun, Mother. Because this is how we spend time together. This is how we spend our Black Friday. This is how we shop for fine olive oils and soybean wax candles. This is HOW WE DO.

Not only did I receive my free hand-painted olive branch salt cellar and spoon, having been one of the first 100 customers (we woke up early to get there at the 10am opening; my aunt and cousin weren't far behind us; we were the only ones in the store), but, the next day, I got to walk around historic Main Street Amherst for Small Business Saturday with my step-mom and witness which stores have kept their integrity and which have gone down the Pandora Vera Bradley Switch-Flop wormhole. I'm telling you, we know how to have a good time. 

And the next day, before my 2pm flight, before our 12:30pm departure from Amherst, after I woke up at the ungodly hour of 8am solely for this particular activity, my mother and I made buckeyes. Buckeyes. Glorious, chocolate, peanut butter, soft, hard, delectable, traditional, so little understood Ohio buckeye candies. Or cookies. I consider them a Christmas cookie, but these morsels are... Well, truly, they're in their own category. 

Tell me you don't know what this is, especially since I've mentioned it once already in a previous recipe:

Oh. Woops. Sorry, my mistake. Wrong buckeye. That's Brutus. He's... yeah... he is a "buckeye"-- his head is a buckeye. He's the OSU mascot, and clearly a little bit forced. Anyways.

Woah, woah, woah! No! Is that-- Is that still Brutus? Sheesh, Brutus, buddy, you've had a rough past. Then again, you are from Ohio, so, understandable. We've all been there-- feeling, maybe looking, like poo. It's OK, because look at you now! A big star for a big team in the Big 10. Congratulations, Brut. Now, can you please leave us alone, so I can get on with explaining my favorite Christmas non-cookie?

Mmmm. There we go. Let's take an more in-depth look.

Yesss. There it is, that buttery, semi-soft, ridiculously rich peanut butter center. 

What about these balls is not appealing?

[Clear nod to one of my favorite SNL sketches of all time, Schweddy Balls, and it's reemergence at this time every year. Merry Christmas, Alec Baldwin.]

This holiday season, my first of, I'm sure, many gifts to enhance the greater good, is the recipe to make your very own traditional Ohio Christmas Buckeye. You have no idea-- You're welcome. 

They think Reduced Fat Jif, stationed next to an entire box of butter, is going to make a difference.

I give to you, shockingly, 52 Recipes of Disaster's first ever real recipe:

The *Best Part About Being from Ohio
1 1/2 cups Jif® Creamy Peanut Butter 

  Or 1 1/2 cups Smucker's® Natural Creamy Peanut Butter

  Or whatever high quality sugar-infested peanut butter goodness you want to include (PEANUT butter. That's    right, no almond or soy or whatever fake nut you want to mash up-- PEANUT.)
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 to 4 cups powdered sugar
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips OR DARK CHOCOLATE, can you guess which is better?
2 tablespoons Crisco® All-Vegetable Shortening 

  Or butter, or any type of oil. Anything that can stop your heart, really. 

- Combine PB, butter, vanilla and salt in large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on low until blended. 

- Add 2 cups powdered sugar, beating until blended. This is when you're going to begin to doubt me. Don't. 

- Beat in additional powdered sugar until mixture, when shaped into a ball, will stay on a toothpick. This is a legitimate measure. 

It really does get tough here, but you have to persevere. Your electric machine is probably not game enough to beat all of this powdered sugar into your peanut butter mixture, but that's OK; you can handle it. Get a wooden spoon. Finish it off yourself. 

- Shape into 1-inch balls. Refrigerate. For, like, however long your patience will remain in tact, but at least for 20 minutes. 
- Place chocolate chips and shortening in microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on medium for 30 seconds. Stir. Repeat until mixture is smooth. Reheat as needed while coating peanut butter balls. 

- Insert toothpick in peanut butter ball. Dip 3/4 of ball into chocolate, leaving top uncovered to resemble a buckeye**. Place on wax paper-lined tray. Remove toothpick. 

- Smooth over holes. (Yeah, you're gonna have 'em, 'specially as a first-timer. Major gouges call for major sampling, though, am I right?)

- Refrigerate until firm.

* Besides Cedar Point

**Jif trusts that all readers know what a buckeye looks like. I'd like to say the fine folks at Jif are a smart people, but I know, sadly, from experience, that I'm educating quiiiiite a number of individuals on what a buckeye even looks like right now. 

Variation
SPICY BUCKEYES: Add 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper with peanut butter mixture in step 1. Continue recipe as-- WHAT. I HAD NOT SEEN THIS. THIS IS PURE BLASPHEMY-- GO AWAY JIF, STOP SPREADING HATE! 

So there you have it. And you better soak it in-- this may be the one and only time that I openly praise anything from my home state. It's the holidays, people. Makes you feel things.

Two things I love? Buckeyes and, now, newly, Great Lakes Christmas Ale. Ohioans-- and some Midwesterners in other states-- stock up on cases upon cases of Christmas Ale as soon as it's released in the fall, because it only comes around once a year. Especially in Cleveland, there is no other beer than Great Lakes. And especially for Anna, there is no other beer that I will drink than one whose glass's rim is dipped in honey and coated with brown sugar. I should've said that first. 

Forever changed.

I encourage everyone, from those in Midwestern suburbs of suburbs to my friends who grew up in Beverly freaking Hills, to call upon what they love about their home state. Clearly easier for some more than others, but it really does help to have even a little pride. Oh, you heard me-- don't think I don't have pride. If you make fun of Ohio and you aren't from Ohio, Imma throw some OSU-Cedar-Point-Rock-'n-Roll-Hall-of-Fame-War-of-1812 shit down. 

Happy Holidays!