Recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Caramel Balls at Life's Ambrosia

On my Monday Musings post this week, I mentioned that I failed at a cheesecake. It was disheartening. However, I still had a craving for some kind of dessert in the house. Enter these Chocolate Peanut Butter Caramel Balls. They are different then your traditional peanut butter ball because I added a hefty portion of creamy dulce de leche to the peanut butter mixture. One bite and I totally forgot about that cheesecake fail.

These little devils were almost a fail though. You see, instead of adding the dulce de leche to the peanut butter mixture, my first thought was to stick a little piece of caramel into the middle of the peanut butter ball. The result was a giant peanut butter ball with a hard piece of caramel in the center. AKA a horrible idea. So I removed all the pieces of caramel. Stirred in the dulce de leche and voila. Little bites of peanut butter, caramel and chocolate heaven.

A couple tips when making these. First, I used Adam’s Peanut Butter. The only ingredients are peanuts and salt. If you use a peanut butter that already has some sugar in it you are going to want to use less powdered sugar then the recipe calls for. Second, I think it’s best to chill the peanut butter caramel mixture for a bit before forming the balls.. It makes the balls easier to roll. Third, just to aid in the rolling, I had a little plate of powdered sugar sitting next to me to press my hands in. It helped keep the peanut butter from sticking to them. Finally, I am not a huge fan of using shortening to make the chocolate harden. So I took to twitter and I owe a huge thank you to Theresa at The Craving Chronicles for suggesting using coconut oil. It worked perfectly. And for those of you that fear it would taste like coconut, it didn’t.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Caramel Balls Recipe

Creamy peanut butter and smooth caramel rolled together and coated in chocolate. Perfect for Halloween.

Makes 40 - 50

Prep time: 2 hr 30 min

Cook time: 05 min

Ingredients:

2 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 (1 stick) cup unsalted butter, softened
2 - 2 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 cups dulce de leche
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips
2 tablespoons coconut oil
sprinkles

Instructions:

In a mixer or in bowl mix together peanut butter, butter, 2 cups of powdered sugar and dulce de leche. Mix well. Taste, if it needs to be sweeter add the remaining powdered sugar. Chill mixture for thirty minutes.
Remove mixture from refrigerator and using a heaping teaspoon of the mixture, roll into balls. Chill for at least 30 minutes up to overnight.
Melt the semi sweet chocolate chips with 1 tablespoon of coconut oil. Melt the while chocolate chips with the remaining tablespoon of coconut oil.
Dip the peanut butter caramel balls into the chocolates. Sprinkle sprinkles over the top before candy hardens. Refrigerate for about 1 hour to allow the chocolate to harden.

Enjoy!

Responses to "Chocolate Peanut Butter Caramel Balls"

“
OMG what are you doing to me?! I have a jar of dulce de leche sitting in my fridge and I love PB and chocolate, so how am I supposed to NOT make these now? You owe me new (bigger) pants ;)
”

- Theresa

“
These look fantastic!!
”

- JulieD

“
I’m sorry for your cheesecake fail but these peanut butter balls are amazing! And I still would’ve totally gobbled these up with the hard caramel center!
”

- Chung-Ah | Damn Delicious

“
Question – do you need to use the coconut oil? These look great.
”

- leana

“
Thanks Leana- No, you don’t need to use the coconut oil. You can simply use melted chocolate but it tends to melt a bit faster when left at room temp. You could also use shortening if you like.
”

- Deseree