Natural Peanut Butter Balls

These peanut butter balls are a holiday favorite in our house. I modified my mother's recipe to use natural peanut butter.

Ingredients

 * 1 jar unsalted crunchy natural peanut butter
 * 1/2 - 3/4 jar salted crunchy natural peanut butter
 * 1 stick of butter, softened
 * 1-1/3 C. powdered sugar
 * 7+ C. of puffed rice cereal ("Rice Krispies")
 * 1-2 packages of chocolate bits

Directions

 * Using a mixer, blend peanut butter and butter with sugar.
 * Add the rice cereal and mix well. The dough will be very stiff, and it may be necessary to hand mix the last cup.
 * Add additional peanut butter, sugar, or rice krispies as needed to provide desired taste/texture
 * Chill dough thoroughly.
 * Roll the dough into 1-inch balls, and place on wax paper. Freeze until solid.
 * Melt chocolate in a double boiler.
 * Dip each ball into the chocolate to cover. Return to the wax paper and chill or freeze until chocolate has set.
 * Store balls in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.


 * makes approx. 7 dozen


 * Hints: The dough will be fairly sticky even after it is chilled. Food preparation gloves are helpful for rolling it into balls.  Freezing the balls in a metal brownie tin, and then placing the tin on a flat ice pack to stay cold while dipping them in the chocolate makes that step much easier.