September 3, 2018

Peanut Butter Balls with Cane Syrup

Name: Peanut Butter Balls with Cane Syrup
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 20 min
Ingredients: 1 cup invert sugar aka cane syrup* (see note); 1/2 tbsp molasses; 2 cups crunchy peanut butter; 4 cups rice cereal

Baking with M, week 6

Ever since finding out I’m allergic to corn two weeks ago, I’ve been noticing all of the things I love to make and eat that have some version of corn in them.

This weekend, we were invited to a potluck at a friend’s house. They were providing barbecue ribs and chicken. (Yum!)

My favorite thing to bring to a potluck is dessert. I love to cook, but my baking typically “travels” better, and generally gets better reviews. On the other hand, baking feels more like a challenge to me now, since I’m also a little allergic to cow’s milk and lactose intolerant. I’ve always loved baking and feeding others more than eating (all of) the results myself, but now that it’s scientifically tied to feeling unwell, I’m a little sad to actually have to avoid most of the things I make. But – I still love making things for my friends and family to enjoy. A dilemma, for sure.

For this potluck, my husband requested peanut butter balls. I’ve been using this fantastic recipe from Trisha Yearwood for a few years now. It’s easy, fast, and no bake, which is perfect for a hot, humid day in Texas like today. But it also involves corn syrup – a full cup of the stuff.

So I started looking around the interwebs for sugar-based corn syrup replacements, and I came across this recipe for invert sugar, aka cane syrup, at The Kitchn. This worked really well, though I had to make some other adjustments to the original recipe.

Recipe Experimenting

For my first batch, I tried replacing the cane syrup with corn syrup one-to-one with no other changes. The mixture came out a little bit drier and more crumbly. I got a lot of peanut butter balls out of it, but was left with some candied rice cereal that wouldn’t hold together.

Peanut Butter Balls Candied Cereal — Candied Rice Cereal

Peanut Butter Balls First Batch Crumbly — First Batch

They were also a little sweeter than the original. My daughter LOVED them this way (no surprise there), but my husband and I didn’t. I suspected this was because the original recipe calls for half light corn syrup and half dark corn syrup, while the cane syrup was all light.

For my next test batch, I added a little molasses, and it made all the difference. With the light cane syrup it the mixture was purely sweet and needed more depth of flavor, and the molasses adds just the right mix of richness and dampens the almost cloying sweetness of the pure cane syrup.

This Recipe with Kids

The majority of this recipe isn’t very friendly for young children since it happens with very hot sticky liquids on the stovetop. However, if you let the mixture cool for a couple minutes after mixing in the cereal until it’s just cool enough to handle, your littles can have fun helping form the actual peanut butter balls.

For us, it was also a good lesson in testing temperature. I scooped some of the mixture up with a spoon when it was still a little bit to hot to handle (I tested it first so I knew it wouldn’t burn) and let my daughter gently approach the mixture with her hand to feel its warmth.