Peanut Butter Cups

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Peanut Butter Cups

February 19, 2011 by pictureperfectcooking

Peanut Butter Cups are one of mine & C’s favorites treats. C is not a big sweet eater, preferring salty or spicy snacks, but if he wants a sweet treat these are what he usually goes for. Of course, we have always eaten the “store-bought” cups in the orange wrappers, but I found this homemade version at Joy of Baking and decided to give it a try. We were not disappointed! These don’t taste exactly like the originals and the chocolate coating is crisper than the originals as well. At least, that is how mine turned out, but they were still good, good, good!

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup powdered sugar

9 oz semi sweet chocolate chips

9 oz milk chocolate chips

1 tbsp shortening

Line a miniature muffin pan with paper liners. This is supposed to make 36 cups and my pan only held 24 liners, so I just left the rest on the counter.

Place the peanut butter, unsalted butter, and salt in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat in the microwave for 20 second intervals until the peanut butter and butter are soft enough to mix together but not melted. This took about 40 seconds. Stir in the powdered sugar. This completes the filling.

In a separate bowl, melt the 2 chocolates with the shortening in the microwave oven at 50% power for about 2 minutes, checking the progress after 1 minute. Stir the chips until they are completely melted, then cook for 20 seconds at a time. Drop a teaspoon of the chocolate in each liner. Top this with a scant teaspoon of the peanut butter mixture. At this point, the cups will look like this:

By the way, I overfilled mine just a little. Pour another teaspoon of the melted chocolate over the top of the peanut butter and spread it around until it completely covers the top and seals around the edges of the paper liner.