How To Make Peanut Butter Balls

Right, so we're going to make peanut butter balls. They're balls of sweet peanut butter dipped in a chocolate coating and really tasty. So first of all, we're going to make the filling.

So, in here, I've got 170 grams of Fair Trade peanut butter. You can use smooth or crunchy. I'm using a smooth one here.

I've got 200 grams of icing sugar and 115 grams of softened butter. Okay, so start to mix all of that together. I'm going to add a teaspoonful of vanilla extract and I keep on bringing all of that together.

Peanuts have been a really great crop for the farmers that we work with in Malawi because a lot of them used to depend pretty much entirely on growing tobacco so as sales of tobacco decreased, which is obviously a good thing, it's really important for them to have another source of income, and as well as being a crop that they can sell, peanuts are a fantastic source of protein for the farmers and their families. And then, we're going to shape these into balls. So, I find that easiest to do with wet hands.

So I've wet my hands to make it easier to shape the balls and then I'm going to take teaspoonfuls of mixture and roll them into balls and put them on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Okay, so once you've shaped all your balls, you want to put those in the freezer for an hour so they can firm up. I've taken these out of the freezer and they're nice and firm now so they're ready to dip into the chocolate.

So, we're going to take them one by one, make sure they're completely covered, lift them out with a fork, let the excess chocolate drain off, there we are. The more chocolate you let drain off, the neater the finished product will be. You want to do them one by one rather than putting them all in the chocolate at once because as they warm up, they'll soften and you'll just end up with a big chocolate peanut mess.

So, we just leave those to set and then they're all done, a very tasty treat.