Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Recipe

12 Days of Edible Gifts: Peanut Butter Cups

December 9, 2009

With the holidays upon us and gift giving soon here, it's the perfect time to make your own affordable and edible gifts. Earlier this week, PartySugar featured her decadent chocolate truffles and to continue with the chocolate theme, I made homemade peanut butter cups. It only takes an afternoon to put together these delectable chocolate cups. Packaged in a small box or bag, they're a wonderful favor for any holiday guests.

The peanut butter base is simple, and the chocolate coating requires nothing more than a melted chocolate milk mixture. I made mine with more dark chocolate, but feel free to change the ratio depending on your tastes. Once you've enjoyed a homemade peanut butter cup, a Reese's will never compare! To celebrate your holidays with these chocolate peanut butter cups, keep reading.

Adapted from Nigella Lawson

Peanut Butter Cups

Ingredients

For the peanut butter base:
1/4 cup soft dark brown sugar
2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/2 stick butter, softened
7 ounces smooth peanut butter
For dark chocolate:
7 ounces dark chocolate
3 1/2 ounces milk chocolate

Directions

Place all the ingredients for the base in the bowl of a food processor. Blend the mixture until the mixture takes on a sandy texture.
Place 48 gold petit four cases in sets of miniature tart tins or mini-muffin tins (each indent about 1 3/4-inches in diameter). Use 1 teaspoon of the base mixture to fill the bases of the petit four cases. Press the sandy mixture down into the cases as best you can to form a layer at the bottom of each paper case.
Place the milk chocolate and dark chocolate together into a heatproof bowl. Suspend the bowl over a pan of simmering water (the water should not touch the bottom of the bowl). Melt the chocolate gently while stirring. Spoon teaspoonfuls of the melted chocolate onto the top of each of the sandy bases of the petit four cases.
Let them set in the fridge, for about 30 minutes.
To package, use a small box and layer the peanut butter cups or using saran wrap cut into squares place 3 to 5 peanut butter cups in the center, gather the saran wrap in the center and tie with a bow. Create a cute label and affix it to the packages.

Makes 48 peanut butter cups.

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22 Comments

RubySnow 2 years 23 weeks

Thanks Lauren! I'm definitely going to make these. Yuuuuuuuuuum.

lauren 2 years 23 weeks

hey rubysnow, The chocolate coats almost all of peanut butter balls. You can make them into a small ball too, so it ensures more chocolate coverage. I guess you could also put a little of chocolate in the bottom then the peanut butter and more chocolate. They are absolutely delicious!!!!

RubySnow 2 years 23 weeks

I don't know if I'm reading this correctly, but from what I understand, there's no chocolate on the bottom of these like there is in the original ones? So the chocolate is only on the top?

mariavivian 2 years 23 weeks

Hi Fenchurch. I'm interested with the way you formed the peanut butter into ball shapes. Can you give the details on on how you did it? Thanks!

Fenchurch 3 years 22 weeks

I made these yesterday, but made the mistake of using semi-sweet chocolate to melt - way too sweet! I mean, still delicious, but very sweet. I'm going to try another batch with dark chocolate and see how that goes. Also, I made the peanut butter into ball shapes instead of making it the bottom base. I was concerned that it would crumble too easily if it wasn't held together by the chocolate and it seemed to work well this way.