08 March 2013

Recipe | Homemade Peanut Butter Cups


I have become obsessed with recipes on blogs.

Obsessed.

There are two birthdays at work this week and I wanted to make some chocolaty treats as presents, so naturally I turned to the big-netty-webness on a hunt for something suitably simple but yummy.

Having whiled away hours over at A Beautiful Mess, I discovered Emma's Food Coma where I stumbled onto this recipe for homemade peanut butter cups.

How could I possibly resist anything that involved mini cupcake holders?!

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Makes 24 mini cups
400g dark chocolate - I used Bourneville
Oil
Peanut butter (I'd say you only need about 1/4 of a tub)
Icing sugar*
Butter*
Brown sugar*




1. Melt 200g chocolate with a tablespoon of oil. I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring in between until it was all melty and awesome.


2. Put a teaspoon-ish of chocolate in each mini cupcake holder.


3. Tap the tray gently on the work surface to evenly distribute the chocolate. Put in the fridge, making sure the tray is balanced until the chocolate has set.



Here's where everything gets a bit tricky. The original recipe said to melt peanut butter, butter, sugar and slowly add icing sugar until you have a thick, creamy batter, at which point you need to roll it into small balls.

Roll.

Batter.

Roll.

This did not work. Obviously. To be honest I think you'd be fine just using peanut butter alone, although perhaps some added icing sugar would help to thicken it? Unsurprisingly, this next step was...messy.



4. I used my two forefingers to gently blob the peanut butter mixture into the cases, careful to make sure there was space all the way around for the top layer of chocolate. This started to harden pretty quickly on the cold chocolate and I slightly flattened the blobs with a knife so that they sat lower than the top of the cases.



5. Melt the rest of the chocolate with the oil and fill the cases. Tap to evenly distribute. Add more where necessary to ensure flat surfaces before popping back in the fridge to set again.


I found these super cute individual cupcake boxes in Asda, and they were perfect for these little beauts!  With some tissue paper, these boxes held 8 cups.





When I was at uni my housemate was a keen baker. I, on the other hand, was a fiend when it came to the butter icing. In my eyes it was the perfect coupling. I would eat and eat and eat. I'd be sat there, still dipping my spoon into the bowl long after the rest of my housemates had thrown in the towel. Basically, I don't know if you've ever put icing sugar in peanut butter but it turns out you end up with peanut-y butter icing. See that empty mug? Yeah, that happened.

I was wary that I hadn't added enough oil to the chocolate to really...do anything. I don't think I added more than a teaspoon (the original recipe called for a tablespoon) but it stopped the chocolate from hardening properly so these were easy to bite into. You could definitely add more if you wanted them even gooier but I thought it was a decent amount.

* Personally I'm also not convinced you need the extra sugar and butter to make the filling. I thiiiink you could get away with just using peanut butter, which would also make this slightly less messy! I will report back after my next batch...!

And what about any leftovers?

All I have to say is:


Mmmmmm.

12 comments:

  1. mmmmm indeed! i remember making my own peanut butter cups once when i was young and making an absolute mess of the entire kitchen. thank god for mums.

    you should try pinterest for recipes, if you don't already! and foodgawker.com is amazeballs - type in any ingredient into the search bar and it'll pull up the best/favourite recipes with that ingredient. it's saved my dinners when i've got only a few things and no idea what to make of them!

    love the blog :]

    breathing-easy.blogspot.ca

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh my goodness, foodgawker looks amazing!! Thanks for the tip, will definitely be turning to it when I'm stuck for meal ideas!

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  2. That Looks so YUM!

    www.stylesfrillsandheels.blogspot.co.uk
    Claudia♥

    ReplyDelete
  3. Those look beyond yum! :) Your blog is absolutely fabulous-just became a member/follower of your blog. I hope you'll follow me back and we can keep in touch. Happy Blogging!!!

    ♥ Elle
    www.thehighfeather.com 
    High Feather Twitter
    High Feather Facebook
    High Feather Bloglovin

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  4. I just nominated you for the Liebster Award! :) xox

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  5. these look delicious, will have to try this recipe out some time x
    yasmin
    http://noise-and-confusionn.blogspot.co.uk/

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  6. These looks amazing! I've always wanted to try the reeces version (if that's what it's called)
    but I think I might have to give this a go one day soon!
    Great blog, I'm a new follower :)


    Samantha xo | SamanthaLusts

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  7. It looks so yummy!



    http://www.style-chameleon.com/

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  8. I love anything that has chocolate in it, so I AM going to try these! They seem very yummy :)

    ReplyDelete