With this first “Tasty Tuesdays” post coming out on the 14th of February, the first recipe I’m going to share with y’all is going to be something sweet in honor of Valentine’s Day. A member of my family absolutely LOVES Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but he has been grumbling A LOT about “shrink-flation” when it comes to his beloved sweet treat. Every time he purchases any size package of ’em, he never fails to show me the size of ’em — “They’ve shrunk… AGAIN!” he’ll complain, adding “AND the price has gone up on ’em, too!”
Well… After hearing this so many times, I decided to give him a homemade version of his beloved sweet treat for Valentine’s Day — as a surprise AND With the hope that they’ll save us some money in the long run. So… I did a quick Internet search and found not one, but two recipes for homemade peanut butter cups. Because I liked part of one and a different part of the second one, I decided to combine the two. Without further ado, here’s “my” recipe for homemade peanut butter cups:
Homemade Peanut Butter Cups
Ingredients
- 3/4 pound good quality dark or milk chocolate
- 1 cup smooth or chunky peanut butter
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Directions
Bottom:
- Melt chocolate at 50% power in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds. The chocolate doesn’t have to be completely melted; as it sits, little pieces will melt into the mixture. Be extra careful not to overheat the chocolate.
- Place about a teaspoon of chocolate into each well of a silicone mold, and with the back of a spoon, “pull” the chocolate up the sides, ensuring that the bottom and sides are completely covered.
- Place in the freezer for about 30 seconds to stiffen up the chocolate. Afterwards, you can “re-pull” more or fill in any gaps.
- Place into the refrigerator until cold.
Filling:
- Mix together peanut butter, powdered sugar, graham cracker crumbs, and salt in a bowl until well blended and free of any large clumps.
- Using a tablespoon-sized cookie dough scoop or a tablespoon, scoop up some of the peanut butter filling, roll it into a ball with your hands, and then flatten it slightly into a disk.
- Place the disks into each of the wells in the silicone mold that have already been filled with chocolate.
Top:
- Spoon enough of the melted chocolate on top of the disks of peanut butter filling to completely cover them.
- Once all of the wells have been topped off with the melted chocolate, put the filled silicone mold into the refrigerator to set for at least 30 minutes.
- Enjoy!
NOTES:
I used a silicone mold that I purchased a while ago because I knew I was going to be making these eventually (also bought a silicone egg mold for a spring holiday), but one of the recipes stated that you could use cupcake liners — the foil ones, if I remember correctly, since they’re stronger than the regular paper ones.
When I made a batch for myself, I melted one of the Dollar General’s (“Literacy”) dark chocolate candy bars, and I was definitely pleased with the results. In fact, I much prefer melting the candy bar and then eating it as opposed to eating it straight out of the wrapper. Go figure…
After the success I had with the homemade peanut butter cups, I went on to use the same molds to make MY favorite kind of candy: dark chocolate nonpareils! Had to use rainbow nonpareils since I couldn’t find any of the all-white kind that is use predominately in commercial products. No biggie… Now I’ve just got to figure out how to drop the chocolate, so I can replicate “Sno Caps” (my favorite “movie” candy) at home! If you’ve got any ideas about how to do this, I’d love to hear from you!
Well… This concludes my very first “Tasty Tuesdays” post since my LiveJournal days. I hope you give this easy recipe a try, and if you do, I hope you’ll leave me a comment to let me know how it went for you!