Popping Buckeyes
& Eggnog Cocktails

My mother used to make Buckeyes for me, and I’d help her some­times. It was always a fun expe­ri­ence, and it was my first intro­duc­tion to cook­ing. Unfortunately I can’t eat them much any­more because I ate so many as a kid. I used to sneak behind my Mom’s back to get them out of the tin she kept them in, in the freezer.

I’ve always called them Buckeyes because I grew up in south­east­ern Ohio, which is known as the buck­eye state. And of course the treats also look like the nuts of the buck­eye tree. Keeping that name for this recipe is a lit­tle bit of my Ohio pride com­ing through, even though I haven’t lived there in years.

The coat­ing of Pop Rocks in this recipe is a vari­a­tion on the usual choco­late coat­ing. It adds a neat twist. You can buy pas­try rocks, which are pretty much the same thing as Pop Rocks, from Chef Rubber.

–Sam Fahey-Burke, Staff Chef, The Cooking Lab

Additional Tips for Making Popping Buckeyes:

• We like both the taste and color of hazel­nut, but you can make these with peanut but­ter or any other kind of nut but­ter or paste. Vary the amount of but­ter used depend­ing on the con­sis­tency of nut paste used. When using creamy peanut but­ter, for exam­ple, no but­ter is required.
• We use PreGel nut pastes and butters.
• If you have access to a col­loid mill, you can make your own hazel­nut but­ter by run­ning hazel­nuts through the mill a few times. The greater the num­ber of passes through the mill, the smoother the tex­ture of the nut butter.
• Weigh each lump of dough before rolling it between your palms to form a sphere. Each ball should weigh approx­i­mately 20 g.
• The spheres don’t have to be per­fectly round!
• You can get neutral-flavored pas­try rocks from Chef Rubber or try using Pop Rocks candy, which come in a vari­ety of col­ors and fla­vors. Some fla­vors may work bet­ter than oth­ers when mixed with nut paste and chocolate!
• Use a bam­boo skewer to dip the ball into the melted chocolate.
• Let the choco­late layer harden com­pletely before remov­ing the skewer and plac­ing the buck­eye on the tray.
• Store the buck­eyes between lay­ers of wax paper in an air­tight con­tainer in the freezer.
• The buck­eyes keep, frozen, for about two months.
• After sit­ting at room tem­per­a­ture for about an hour, the buck­eyes become too soft and should be refrozen.

Additional Tips for Making the Cocktails:

• Add the rum or cognac to the cof­fee or tea shortly before you serve the drinks, so that the alco­hol doesn’t evap­o­rate away.

Additional Tips for Making Eggnog Foam:

• Depending on the size of the eggs, you will need about 15 eggs to yield 250 g of egg yolks.
• Make sure to cool the foam base com­pletely after cook­ing it sous vide.
• Because of the low vis­cos­ity of the base, we have found that only a whip­ping siphon cre­ates foam of the proper tex­ture. Whipping with an aero­latte does cre­ate a foam, but it isn’t as sta­ble and airy as a siphoned foam.
• We gar­nish the cof­fee drink with choco­late and anise; we use nut­meg and anise to gar­nish the tea. But feel free to impro­vise with other freshly-grated spices that you like.
• These drinks are best made to order; if they sit too long, the foam runs down into the beverage.
• We pre­fer using a cold-brewing cof­fee kit such as a Toddy, which pro­duces cof­fee with a deli­cious, low-acid fla­vor. But you can instead make hot cof­fee and then chill it.
• The foam base keeps, refrig­er­ated, for about two days.

We like the two-tone color of the drink when served in a mar­tini glass.

Do not turn your back on these! They will be gone faster than Santa can get down the chimney!

Roll the dough between your palms to form round balls.

Real buck­eye nuts are rather lumpy.

You can use neutral-flavored pas­try rocks from Chef Rubber or try using Pop Rocks candy in this recipe.

We use freshly-grated spices on our eggnog.

Looking for more ways to spice up your Christmas cel­e­bra­tions? Join us in the Cooks Forum!

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