W1: REMEMBERING HOME -- Buckeyes, but not of the OSU variety

It's not terribly exciting for me to say that Christmas is my favorite holiday. It's a lot of people's go-to answer, and the fact that my birthday comes a week beforehand just gives me an added incentive to love the merry celebration even more, I suppose. But there is one more reason I love the Christmas holiday: buckeyes.

And, yes, I am well aware that the buckeye candy - a delicious powdered-sugar-and-peanut-butter ball dipped in melted chocolate, for those of you not in the know - isn't strictly a Christmas sweet by any means. I've typically seen them around in the fall, too, but I'm also not going to necessarily protest if someone offered to make me a batch of them in the middle of summer.

For me, buckeyes represent winter, though, and, more importantly, home.

I mentioned in class how baking with my sisters is a sort of bonding experience, but the Coletta Girls' Adventures in the Kitchen date back to a time before chocolate chip cookies and the occasional zucchini loaf.

This yummy concoction is from Etsy.com.

When we were little, my sister Emily and I used to make buckeyes with my grandmother right around Christmas time every year. We spent many an afternoon at her house, snacking on things we couldn't get from Mom (Ho-Hos, those fudge brownie things with the rainbow sprinkles, Dunkin' Donuts and that too-sweet chocolate milk), but making buckeyes was always one of my favorite times.

We'd have to search through her big recipe book and gather all the ingredients, and I remember having to stand on a step-stool from the bathroom because the counter was too tall for me to reach. Maybe it's because I was a kid, and an avid Play-Doh enthusiast, but I loved how the powdered sugar and peanut butter mix felt between my fingers. Creamy, soft, and somehow not weird that in about two seconds it was going in my mouth.

Dipping the balls was a sort of art - you have to stick them with a toothpick and try not to lose them in the sea of melted chocolate. I've had my fair share of casualties, but there was always a sense of pride when I managed to make more near-perfect buckeyes than Emily did.

One thing I absolutely cannot do is the prepackaged buckeye. They're just not the same. They're too smooth, too fake tasting, like an anti-tasty Reese Cup knock-off.

Eventually, Emily and I grew up and got too old and/or too cool to spend our winter break afternoons making buckeyes with our grandma, but hardly a winter season goes by without me making them somewhere, at some time. I've made them to take to holiday parties at work and sometimes the task of making them for a family or neighborhood get-together goes to me. I haven't come across them too often in Athens, but when I do (usually they're in the abominable packaged form), I'm immediately transported back to a time where one of my biggest concerns in life was not falling off a step-stool and racing my sister to see who could fill up the sheet of wax paper first.

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