Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls Recipe | Vegan

Someone asked me what my favourite recipes were recently, and a few came to mind, but the one that always sticks out when someone asks me that is my frozen peanut butter clusters. Thinking about those made me wonder what else I could make with similar flavours, that fell into the same bitesize snack category. With that, I came up with this peanut butter popcorn balls recipe.  

My frozen clusters are frozen peanut butter with crunchy granola, dipped in chocolate and stored in the freezer. So, they’re bize sized, with nut butter, chocolate and something crunchy. These peanut butter popcorn balls are chocolatey, have the crunch from the popcorn. The biggest real difference is that these ones are more of a melt in the mouth buttery ganache texture, rather than frozen. But if you’ve been here a while and you know the recipe I’m talking about (it was a popular one), and you liked that one, I think you’ll enjoy this one too.  

Rough Balls or Smooth Bites?

Now, you can make this the super simple and slightly less presentable way, which I think is a great way to make something fun with younger kids. Or you can make things a little bit more intricate, take slightly longer but make something that looks really polished. I’ve made a mix of both so that you can see the difference and make a choice for yourself.  

The easier way is as simple as melt, stir and pour, leave to set and enjoy. On the other hand, you can crush your popcorn, place everything more delicately, leave to set, then assemble later.  

I used a cake pop tray to make mine, it makes it really easy to keep a rough shape, and as it’s silicone, they pop out really easily when they’ve set. If you’re making the less presentable method, the cake pop is more of a guide to keep them roughly the same size. For the neater versions, you’re flattening off the top of the chocolate in the semi circle cake pop so that you can add a little bit more melted chocolate later to put the two together and make a perfect ball shape.  

Nutritional Information  

For the rougher bites 

Based on the recipe below making 15 balls, each serving provides 6.6g of fat, 102 calories and 1.3g of protein. They also provide 1.1 mg of iron each. 

For the smooth balls 

This version is slightly larger, so the amounts below only make 12 balls (24 semi circles). Each ball provides 9g of fat, 1.9g of protein and 1.4mg of iron.  

Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls Recipe 

Creamy, melt in the mouth chocolate peanut butter balls with a light nutty popcorn crunch.  

I used the Propercorn Almond Peanut popcorn for this recipe along with Meridian nut butter.

5 from 1 vote

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Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls Recipe

Creamy, melt in the mouth chocolate peanut butter balls with a light nutty popcorn crunch.

Course Dessert, Snacks

Cuisine American

Keyword Peanut Butter Popcorn Balls

Prep Time 25 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Servings 15

Calories 102 kcal

Ingredients

• 200 g melted chocolate
• 2 tbsp chocolate peanut butter or2tbsp peanut butter and 1 tsp cocoa powder
• 30 g peanut popcorn
• 1 tbsp melted butter

Smooth:

• As above but you’ll only need 20g of popcorn, and chop/ crush it first.
• Plus 15 extra chocolate chips yes, 15, not 15g

Instructions

1. Melt your chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a pan of boiling water. When the chocolate is about 90% melted, add in the vegan butter and peanut butter to combine and melt together.
2. If making the smooth balls, stir in your crushed popcorn, then pour the mix into the cake pop tray evenly to the line.
3. Leave the tray in the fridge to set. They cool quickly when they hit the silicone so this should only take 10-15 minutes.
4. Once set, pop out of the silicone trays. melt the chocolate chips and drop a little on half of them, then place them on top of one another to form a ball. Place back in the fridge to set again.
5. For the less neat clusters, simply stir the whole popcorn into the Chocolate peanut butter mix and then place a heaped tsp in the cake pop trays. Place in the fridge to set, pop out when ready to serve.

Serve and enjoy!

Which version would you make, the neater balls or rough bites?  

Until tomorrow,

Sophie 

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