Recipe: Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Can you believe that it's Thursday already? I mean, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I went away and only got back to work yesterday, but still - I think work weeks should be 3 days every week! Don't you? And, to make today even better, I'll be posting twice - once right now with an awesome recipe to make your own peanut butter cups and then again this afternoon with some updates and reviews on this month's READ THIS! novel.

A few weeks ago I pinned a delicious looking recipe for homemade peanut butter cups that I found on Pinterest from radMegan. For the record, Megan's blog is rad and so is she - these peanut butter cups take a god-like amount of patience to make and, while I don't have this much patience (I quartered/halved the recipe), I certainly admire Megan for hers.

First, get all of your ingredients together. You'll need:

1 16oz jar of creamy peanut butter (I used Skippy)
1 2lb. bag of chocolate chips (I used Nestle Milk Chocolate - could also have used dark chocolate)
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
2 tbsp softened butter
cooking spray
mini-cupcake wrappers

Next, set up your double boiler to melt your chocolate. Don't have a double boiler? Great! Neither do I! To make your own, simply take a small saucepan and add water to it. Then, take another - preferably stainless steel - bowl and place that on top of the saucepan so that it isn't touching the water, but does create a seal. You don't want your bowl to sit too low, but you also don't want any gaps between the pan and your bowl. To melt your chocolate, first bring your water to a boil, then reduce it to simmering. Once simmering, place your bowl filled with chocolate chips on top and stir occasionally until melted.




While melting, use this time to make your peanut butter mixture. Gather up your filling ingredients ...


... make sure your peanut butter is of the creamy variety ...


... and mix it all together!


Then, place it to the side to be used later. Want help cleaning off the spoon you used for mixing? Get yourself a cute puppy!

He was very excited to help me in the kitchen!

Next, set up your mini-cupcake wrappers on cookie sheets (to later be placed in your fridge) and lightly spray them with cooking spray so that the peanut butter cups don't stick to the inside. Then, it's time for the hard part. Using your melted chocolate, spoon a little bit into each cup so that it coats the bottom and the sides. You'll want a thin coating and will have to turn the cups to get it, so that the bottom and sides are completely coated. This is time consuming. And frustrating. And really not very easy. As a result, I only made about 20 peanut butter cups when I think this recipe will make about 60 or so, at the very least.


Once you've coated the wrappers with chocolate, place them in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to allow the chocolate to set.


Once set, take your peanut butter mixture and either spoon or pipe it into your chocolate cups. I chose to pipe the peanut butter - filling a ziploc bag and then snipping off an edge.


I piped a little bit of chocolate into each cup and then covered each with a spoonful of melted chocolate. These steps were a lot of fun (and not time consuming) as compared to the first steps. After filling the cup up with chocolate, I placed the cookie sheet in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes to allow for it to set completely.


Finally, I took one out of the fridge ...


... and enjoyed it!


Mmm! So delicious! They kept in the fridge for a week and then I brought them into work and everyone loved them! But please, be warned, these are incredibly dangerous! You cannot eat just one!

Have a wonderful Thursday and I will see you all back here later to show you some reviews of this month's READ THIS! novel: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.