Will a plate of Buckeyes affect the outcome of a football rivalry? A guaranteed winner.
Are they cookies or candy? Whatever Buckeyes are–the ones we are baking and eating today are NOT the Buckeye nut. That nut, related to the Hickory, can be eaten by deer and squirrels, but not humans. They look kinda like the little cookies/candy on the plate.
This weekend the whole state of Ohio vibrates with excitement. It is the weekend of THE BIG GAME. The Buckeyes play against “That state up North”. If that is not enough of a clue for the football clueless, team _e_bers are cautioned against using the 13th letter of the alphabet for a week. (Which can be tricky when you are addressing Coach Urban _eyer).
The rivalry goes WAAAAY back. In fact, even before the first football game the two schools played, in 1897, way back before 1837 when Michigan became a state, the two states were skirmishing on the political field. What is now called Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, belonged to Ohio. A complicated deal traded the city of Toledo and the Toledo Strip to Ohio and the Upper Peninsula to Michigan, after a war of words known as The Toledo War.
Harriette Anderson Joins the Buckeyes
My mother was attending Ohio State in 1923 a year after the “Shoe”, the massive new stadium, opened. The second game in that stadium in 1922 was against Michigan Wolverines and announcers said the crowd was 72,000. That in a stadium with 62,210 seats! Crowd sizes measure the enthusiasm even that far back for the rivalry game.
Family Tradition Continues
I arrived at Ohio State in 1956 and promptly joined “Block O” a section of students who made pictures out of cards they held up. Ten years later, my sister also became one of the Buckeyes. She has never recovered from the fact that Ohio State’s marching band, TBDBITL–The Best Damned Band in the Land, was all male until AFTER she graduated, so she never got to play her trumpet out on that hallowed field.
Here’s a page with all the skinny on the rivalry. When I was a student at Ohio State, we won two and lost two, but recently, the state up north as not been doing so well.
Game Time Sweets–The Recipe
But on with the Buckeyes cookies–or candy if that’s your category for this peanut butter/chocolate treat.
According to a December 1972 recipe in OSU employee newsletter, the Buckeyes recipe was invented in 1967 (just seven years after I graduated from Ohio State). The “original” contains paraffin, which I wouldn’t want to put into the chocolate coating even if I had any on hand. But if you want to try the original–be my guest.
Instead, I surfed for a different version of Buckeyes, and found this slightly lower-sugar, lower-fat recipe on the Smitten Kitchen site. Rather than repeat it here, I suggest you follow the link to Smitten Kitchen.
However, I must warn you that the volume amounts and the measurements by weight did not compute on my scale. For instance, I found that a 1-pound jar of Jif Creamy Peanut Butter made a generous cup and a half, which equals 454 grams, not 145, and was definitely enough peanut butter for my taste. I don’t know why she thought 190 grams would be necessary.
Also, the air is dry here in Arizona, which may have accounted for the dough being too dry to form into balls until I added another couple of tablespoons of melted butter. So play it by ear.
I used dark chocolate chips instead of chopped chocolate.
Finally, getting the dough dipped in the chocolate so that only a little spot of peanut butter filling shows was much harder than I thought it would be. It would be a snap to just cover half the ball, but that doesn’t look like a buckeye to me. Smitten Kitchen’s methods didn’t work for me. Let me know how you cope with that step.
I’m hoping we will win tomorrow, but on the list of unpredictability–the outcome of the annual Ohio State Buckeye/Michigan Wolverine game stands out. You never know what will happen. Wish us luck.
But peanut butter and chocolate is a guaranteed winner. Have a cookie.
Ohio State Buckeyes. Great football team. Great cookie. Fitting pillow.