Yesterday I wanted a fun, easy baking project for Rebecca and me. A while back I had seen a recipe for homemade peanut butter cups on The Coconut Mama. They sounded so easy and so good. So we gave them a try yesterday. YUM!!! These are very good. Who knew it was so easy to make your own peanut butter cups that are so much healthier? It’s not something I’ll make all the time since it’s not a cheap treat. It uses quite a bit of coconut oil…and it only made 5 pb cups. But definitely a fun indulgence once in a while. Rebecca helped me put the ingredients in the processor. Then I did the rest…while she helped lick spoons 😛  I made one subsitution (that would make mine not dairy free). I used regular butter instead of coconut butter since I don’t have any. Still worked great. I also used my homemade peanut butter that I already had on hand. Which made this a very quick project. You could use boughten natural pb too. They aren’t the prettiest pb cups, especially on the first try. But they sure are good. Quite messy, but that’s what you get when you don’t add a bunch of hydrogenated oils, etc. to make them shelf stable. Mine don’t look exactly like the kind you buy…I probably added a little too much pb…but is that really possible? 🙂

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

Chocolate

3 Tbsp. organic cocoa powder
2 Tbsp. coconut butter (or regular butter, softened)
1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp. of coconut oil
Sweeten with raw honey or maple syrup (I used a few Tbsp. of raw honey)

Blend well in blender of food processor.

Peanut Butter (this is my recipe…for a full batch of pb, way more than you need for the cups)

2 cups crispy nuts, such as peanuts, almonds or cashews
3/4 cup coconut oil
2 Tbsp. raw honey
1 tsp. sea salt

Place nuts and sea salt in food processor and grind to a fine powder. Add honey and coconut oil and process until “butter” becomes smooth. It will be somewhat liquid but will harden when chilled. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Serve at room temp.

To assemble pb cups:

Scoop chocolate, 1 Tbsp. at a time, into muffin paper cups (I used my silicon muffin cups) until the bottom is covered with chocolate. Add 2 tsp. of peanut butter. Then cover peanut butter with more chocolate.

Freeze peanut butter cups 4-6 hours before serving (mine only took about 1 hour…then I let them set on the counter for a few minutes before eating them).