Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

This is what I made the other day. I got it from Nourishing Gourmet's blog. I've made it before, and they don't stick around too long because they're so tasty. There's a lovely picture of this tasty treat on her blog.

Except this time, I had some cashew and almond butters to use up, so I used that instead of peanut butter. Since they didn't have salt in them, I added about 1/2 tsp. salt to the nut mixture. I didn't add any chopped nuts. And since I didn't have anymore unsweetened chocolate (I used it all up making my flourless chocolate cake), I used cocoa powder instead, in a ratio of 3 Tbsp. powder to 1 Tbsp. coconut oil. A good excuse to use more of healthy fat. Also, because my chocolate mixture was especially thick, I ended up patting down scoops of chocolate in each cup with my finger.

Everything between the lines is entirely from the Nourishing Gourmet. Just want to give credit where credit's due!

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Homemade, Healthier Peanut Butter Cups

If you use another nut butter, you may need to add more honey. Peanuts are naturally sweet. For that matter, this is definitely a “to your own taste” recipe! And you can easily adjust the sweeter to satisfy you.

• 3/4 cup of peanut butter, toasted and salted (or use nut butter of your choice)
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla (if you are making this gluten free, make sure to use gluten free vanilla)
• 1/4 cup of coconut oil
• 1/3 cup of chopped soaked and dehydrated nuts, or toasted (I used a mixture of chopped almonds and pumpkin seeds) *
• 4 ounces of unsweetened chocolate
• 2-4 tablespoons honey *

1-In a small bowl combine the peanut butter, coconut oil, vanilla, first two tablespoons honey, and nuts. Mix until well combined.

2-Drop by the heaping teaspoon into mini cupcake pans. Place in freezer.

3-Chop chocolate into small pieces and place in the top of a double broiler (or, like I do, in a heat proof bowl that fits on top of a pot you have). Mix in the honey. Bring about two inches of water to a boil in the pot and place the bowl on top. Watch the chocolate carefully so that it doesn’t burn, stirring gently while the chocolate melts. When there are just a few chunks left in the chocolate, take off of the heat and allow it to melt completely.

4-Drop by the teaspoon over the peanut butter mixture and place back into the freezer. Freeze for 20 minutes. Take out, and using a butter knife pop them out. Keep in the freezer or refrigerator and enjoy!

*To toast the nuts, place in a dry pan over medium-high heat. Stir almost continually until they are starting to brown. Take off of the heat.

*I used only one tablespoon honey to sweet the chocolate, but we decided that it needed to be sweeter! So I have put two to four tablespoons, depending on how sweet you want it to be.

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A note about using coconut oil--This is an instance where coconut oil would probably work best. But if you don't have that, you could also use melted butter, that would probably be next best. I'm not sure how well olive oil would work.

All I have to say about this is YUM!