Saturday, January 3, 2009

the holy grail: make your own peanut butter cups!


(my hand model and taster, Missus Peanut Butter Cup)
Readers here will have noticed that I live on peanut butter. There was the quest last summer for a peanut butter and jam muffin recipe, which was very successful. But this was more important: can you make peanut butter cups at home? Last week's recipe tasted Ok, but it was a mess and a very difficult recipe to use. A little floating around on the web led me to another blogger who had searched as I had, experimented and made a very wonderful peanut butter cup, which is easy too.
Basically, she melts some chocolate and spoons some into paper muffin cups, then plops on a peanut butter mixture which has some powdered sugar and vanilla, topped with the rest of the melted chocolate and then cooled. Couldn't be easier, and I think it would be fun to do with kids too. I happened to be very messy and not too careful and got chocolate and peanut butter all over: doesn't matter, tastes great!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well - like I said before. Don't mix my peanut butter and chocolate. I'll take them separate, thankyouverymuch.

But it looks like you had a fantastic time and they came out great! Worth the effort, eh?

(now if you had plopped some cherries inside those chocolate cups, I'd be right up! ;))

Anonymous said...

that looks so good. i love peanut butter cups but i try to stay away from them because of the trans fat but whenever i come across newman's i have to buy one. in fact, that's the one treat i buy myself whenever i go to the supermarket.

Gordo said...

Kate, cherries are a terrible thing to do to chocolate. Eww.

Looks great, Gary!

Anonymous said...

I'll take my peanut butter, chocolate, and cherries separate or mixed together. It's all good!

Super-yummy idea!

WheresMyAngels said...

I'm going to go buy the stuff and try making it this week.

Crafter of Khnum said...

Mmmmm. I do make confections too. But, it's been awhile. My focus was on truffles, which as similar to PB cups in a way. To achieve a cleaner result you might try molding and chilling the PB centers a bit before inserting into the chocolate. Fill the bottom of the cup to just cover the bottom with 1/4", plop in a PB center in the middle, then fill the remainder. As always the secret is the chocolate recipe (3oz bittersweet chocolate, 3oz milk chocolate into 4 tablespoons melted butter) which should remain hard at room temperature, but readily melt in your mouth.

I borrow ideas from these folks who are about a mile away from me... http://www.trufflehillchocolates.com/

Anonymous said...

That's a really good idea Crafter of Khnum has, up there, isn't it???

*Gordo - A nice dark, firm Bing cherry slathered with chocolate in those little cups! Mmmmmm. Then we can have a PB&J sandwich on the side, with all that nice jam that Gary and Maude just made!

Gary's third pottery blog said...

Let's just dump it all together and enjoy, shall we?

Anonymous said...

My mom used to make these all the time when I was a kid. Yum!

Anonymous said...

OMG - Gary! Don't dump the PB in with the Cherries and Chocolate! :)

Maggie M. said...

These look fabulous. I live on peanut butter as well (or almond butter when I'm out of pb). I'll have to bookmark them.

Barbara Martin said...

These looks really tasty.

Anonymous said...

I think Missus Peanut Butter Cup has lovely hands and should consider the color of melted chocolate as a fingernail polish color.