Spooky Peanut Butter Puff Truffles

The folks at Betty Crocker invited me to try and come up with a spooky Halloween recipe using some of the General Mills cereals this year. At first, I wasn’t sure that I could do it. Cereals? What can you do with those besides make rice krispie treats and similar marshmallow bars? But I accepted the challenge and set about trying to come up with a more unusual way to use cereal in some kind of Halloween treat.

What I settled on was these Spooky Peanut Butter Puff Truffles. The centers of these peanut butter and chocolate truffles are made with a surprise ingredient: Reese’s Puffs cereal! The truffle balls are dipped into white chocolate and decorated with semisweet chocolate features to give them a very ghostly appearance. Spooky on the outside, sweet on the inside!

If you’ve ever had Peanut Butter Puffs cereal, or seen it in the store, you’ll know that it’s inspired by Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs candies. They also taste pretty much just like candy, so I wanted to keep that peanut butter candy flavor going. The centers are made with the peanut butter cereal, cream cheese and peanut butter. The two softer ingredients help to hold the crushed up cereal together, but have mild enough flavors that you can still taste the peanut butter candy flavor of the cereal itself. Obviously, the peanut butter boosts the flavor and the candy shell just makes it that much more of a Halloween treat.

I hand-dipped the truffles, since I felt it gave the truffles a better look than trying to give them a smooth outer coating. Use a toothpick to draw on the eyes and mouths of the ghosts. It’s actually a very easy way to decorate the ghosts, plus you don’t need to be extremely precise since you want the ghosts to look spooky.

If you want to play with some cereal yourself, or try this recipe, you can submit photos to Betty Crocker’s Spooktackular Gallery where they’ll showcase your results!

Spooky Peanut Butter Puff Truffles

 

8 cups Reese’s Puffs cereal
4 tbsp smooth peanut butter
8-oz cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
12-oz white chocolate chips (1 bag)
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

 

In a food processor, process Reese’s Puffs cereal until it is finely ground. Add in peanut butter, cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar and blend until very smooth.
Shape cereal mixture into 1-inch balls, place on a sheet of wax paper and chill in the refrigerator until firm, about 30 minutes.
In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt the white chocolate. Dip each of the chilled truffle balls into the white chocolate, turn to coat and place back on the sheet of wax paper. Repeat to cover all remaining balls. Chill until chocolate is firm, about 30 minutes.
In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt the semisweet chocolate chips. Dip a toothpick into the chocolate and use it to draw ghost eyes and mouths on each of the truffles.
Chill until ready to serve.

 

Makes about 36 spooky truffles

This last picture is just for fun, since I accidentally jerked the camera as I took the picture. The resulting ghostly effect was just too appropriate for these little guys.