Homemade Peanut Butter Cups Recipe

When was the last time you ate a store-bought chocolate candy bar you really enjoyed? I'm not talking about the artisan kind, either. I'm talking about the candy of your youth. The ones you could easily find when walking into a convenience in the 1980s and buy for a quarter. We all had our favorites, did we not? Those were the days when you could eat a candy bar and play a few games of a stand-up arcade Pac-Man with hard-earned allowance money for around one dollar. I don't know about you but I'm convinced the same candy bars I remember enjoying as a kid are definitely not the same now, and I'm nearly forty years old. 

Truthfully it makes me sad, not that I eat candy all the time. But when I do, I want to enjoy it like I used to. Every night though, I eat a small spoonful of my favorite peanut butter and stud it with chocolate chips. It's my secret, not so secret, indulgence. I had this thought one day. What if I made a peanut butter cup using my favorite peanut butter and good chocolate that actually tastes like chocolate and not a waxy version of its former self? Most homemade peanut butter cup recipes call for additional sugar or cookie crumbs mixed in with the peanut butter. I find this makes the end product too sweet and so unnecessary. Instead, I take a minimalist approach and use just 2 ingredients, chocolate and peanut butter.  If both ingredients are of good quality, why would the peanut butter need to be sweeter, especially if the chocolate is sweet enough to balance out the saltiness of the peanut butter?

Today I'm sharing a really easy recipe for homemade peanut butter cups made with 2 ingredients. The pairing of these ingredients is a match made in candy bar heaven. Best of all you get to customize the type of peanut butter as well as the chocolate. Do you go for creamy or crunchy peanut butter? Dark chocolate or milk chocolate? Do we experiment with almond butter or go with sunflower seed butter because someone might be allergic to peanuts or nuts? There is a certain amount of redemption and satisfaction that comes with being able to make one of these favorite chocolate candies and actually enjoy everything about it. Everything you need is in your kitchen right now. Go ahead, be a kid again, and enjoy every bite.

Tip: Use a sandwich bag and snip a corner to make a make-shift piping bag, perfect for flooding chocolate to make a cup shell.

Tip: Place scooped mounds of peanut butter in the freezer for 15 minutes to make the peanut butter stiffer and easier to work with. Flatten the balls to make a disk on top of foil. Then peel the foil back to make a flat disk to make the filling.

Tip: Cut excess paper back to make the peanut butter cup look more like the ones you buy in the store.

Tip: You can make two different types of peanut butter cup. You can make a complete outer shell or you can make a layered version.

Tip: Homemade Peanut Butter Cups can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator or freezer.