Vday with Oreo Balls!

So it's valentine's day. Woo-hoo. It's a silly holiday that you either celebrate:

1) being single and hating life
2) being in a relationship and hate vday
3) being in a mushy relationship where celebrating vday is like sitting on a cloud for a day (barf)

I am closest to number 1. I am single (love it) but hate when vday comes around. I don't hate it because I don't have anyone to celebrate it with, I hate it because everyone expects me to have some awesome plans and wants to hear about it, no matter if I am single OR taken. It's just another day on the calendar, right? Although, I don't hate when the grocery store has candy hearts, or those chocolate sampler boxes. Those I DO enjoy. ALOT.

But anyways, the reason for the post....

So I had a staff meeting Sunday morning (the person who scheduled the meeting is the only one married, so it made me laugh). I (being one of two girls on staff) decided to make goodies for the guys. OREO BALLS!!! I happened upon the recipe below, and thought it looked easy enough, so I figured I'd try it out (also, no real cooking involved!).

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Oreo Balls
Ingredients:
- 1 Package Oreo cookies, crushed
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1 bag chocolate chips, melted or 2 packages dipping chocolate (white, dark, milk – whichever you prefer!)

Directions:
- Mix the crushed Oreo cookies and cream cheese together in a bowl. Use food processor or blender to speed up this process.
- With your hands, roll Oreo and cream cheese mixture into small balls. Place on baking sheet lined with wax paper.
- Chill in freezer for 30 minutes.
- Melt chocolate chips or dipping chocolate in the microwave until melted.
- Using a toothpick, dip the Oreo balls into the melted chocolate. Cover well.
- Let Oreo balls harden on a wax-paper lined cookie sheet in fridge or freezer. Takes about 15 minutes.
- Keep in fridge! Serve cold and enjoy!
Makes about 25 – 40 Oreo Balls, depending on how you make them.

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Ok, so it looks easy enough, right? Well - it pretty much is. Here's how mine turned out:
- The ones on the left are white chocolate (the tastiest in my opinion) - some have sprinkles
- The middle ones are a mess of white chocolate with red food coloring. Apparently just putting a drop of food coloring into chocolate is NOT how you use it. It turned the chocolate all hard and annoying to use.
- The ones on the right are plain Oreo balls (I ran out of chocolate to melt after the red food coloring fiasco)

Even though my pic above makes them look not so appetizing, the guys LOVED them. They liked them so much, I had 4 of them ask for the recipe afterwards: mix Oreo's and cream cheese, and form balls. EASY as buying vday chocolate from the grocery store.

Here are some tips:

- when crumbling the Oreo's, do it first my hand, then use a mixing bowl.
- if you don't get it ALL the Oreo's crushed, that's no biggie - having some crunch is also tasty
- you don't NEED to dip them in anything - plain Oreo balls are just as tasty (and a tad healthier than a pack of Oreo's with cream cheese already isn't)
- they are MUCH tastier if you have them after you have kept them in the fridge for a few minutes

Enjoy! - apes -