Recipe: No-Bake Peanut Butter Truffles

Mine...don't look like this. Image found here.

I realized that in my parents' fridge, there must have been six partly-used tubs of icing. It makes sense: when you bake a cake or make cupcakes, you never use all of the icing in those Pillsbury containers (or if you do, your icing-to-cake ratio is way off). I was looking for different recipes that used icing, and I found this recipe on the Marsha's Baking Addiction blog. I like peanut butter, I like chocolate: I had to try these. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 3 cups icing/powdered sugar
• 16 oz. dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
• 3/4 cup milk chocolate, coarsely chopped

Directions

1. Using a mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy. Add peanut butter, vanilla, and salt, and beat until smooth and combined.
2. Add the icing sugar and beat on low until combined. The mixture will be crumbly, but you should be able to roll into balls.
3. Roll the dough mixture into 1-inch balls and place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. You should have about 40-45 balls. Refrigerate until firm - about 1 hour. 
4. Add the dark chocolate to a microwave-safe bowl and heat in 30 second intervals, stirring after each one, until melted and smooth. Leave to cool for 5 minutes.
5. Repeat with the milk chocolate. 
6. Dip each peanut butter ball into the melted dark chocolate and place back onto the baking tray. Drizzle with the milk chocolate. Allow to set in the fridge before serving. 

Soo... I have no idea why this recipe came up when I Googled "recipes that use leftover icing." The only place icing is mentioned is what she refers to as "icing sugar," which is more commonly know as powdered or confectioners' sugar. BUT I didn't get that until I was part-way through the recipe. I thought, "Oh, I need three cups of icing. So that's about one-and-a-half tubs." I added half a tub, about one cup, of Pillsbury's Funfetti Bold Purple Vanilla Flavored Frosting, before realizing what she really meant by "icing." At least I caught myself before putting in three cups of frosting! Instead I added 2.5 cups of powdered sugar to salvage what I had already mixed together. I think that worked out okay, and maybe even better, because the mixture was not too crumbly!

Clearly I have a varied understanding of what "one inch balls" look like.

I DID use leftover icing as the chocolate dip on the truffles. I microwaved the containers until the frosting was liquid-y, and then I used a kabob stick and dipped the truffles into the melted chocolate frosting. 

I made poopy buttholes. Yum.

At first they didn't look great (as you can see in the above photo), but then I took a spoon and covered the naked bits with the rest of the chocolate icing.

Video found here.

In the end, they tasted just okay. The flavor seemed to be a little off; it could have been the additional purple icing (too much icing or the fact that the icing was kind of old). And because I didn't use plain chocolate to cover the balls, the truffles didn't have a nice, clean, smooth outside that would harden in the fridge. The icing on the outside remains soft, making these treats a little messy to eat. So, not the worst thing I've ever done (I think that honor goes to my unicorn cake mix cookies), but I probably won't be making these again.