I have a bunch of photos I wanted to share on mini blogposts, but I never seem to find the time! I also wanted to share the giant peanut butter cups we made a few weeks ago for family movie night. so first I’ll share our peanut butter cups and then do a catchup post.
I have been making peanut butter cups and/or balls for years. Reeses peanut butter cups were always one of my favorite candies. Not very healthy, though! And definitely not dairy free. I needed to learn how to make my own vegan peanut butter cups! One of the things I wanted to re-create is the sort of “mealy” texture of reeses peanut butter cups. The filling isn’t super smooth, it kind of crumbles and then melts in your mouth. Most recipes call for powdered sugar in the filling, but I didn’t want to add much (if any) sugar, but I wanted a kind of stiff filling. I had a brilliant idea of adding ground flaxseeds and it worked perfectly! So that is what I have been doing for several years. I don’t have an exact recipe, but my method and ingredients are these:
Scoop some peanut butter in a bowl (less if you just want a few little balls/cups, more if you want… MORE!)
If the peanut butter is quite stiff, put it in the microwave for just a few seconds so it’s softer.
Add a pinch or two (or more, depending on how salty your peanut butter is and how salty you like your filling)
Add a little sweetener if you wish (I usually don’t and I use peanut butter that also has no sweetener in it)
Add enough ground flaxseeds to make a workable filling. If you are making cups, it doesn’t need to be too stiff, but if you are making balls you’ll want it more stiff. It can take a good amount of flax, an awesome and delicious way to get more ground flaxseeds into your diet for those omega 3s!
Melt some chocolate (I use non dairy dark chocolate chips or bars). Either roll your filling into balls and dip into the chocolate, or make peanut butter cups. For cups, I like to use the silicone cupcake liners (I have the mini and full size ones). you can use paper ones, but it is MUCH harder to spread the chocolate in them. The silicone ones make it a breeze and they pop off easily later.
For these giant ones I used the full size cupcake liners. I spread a layer of chocolate on the bottom and up the sides, then let it chill in the freezer for about 5 minutes. Fill it up with the peanut butter filling, and then top with more chocolate and smooth out. Freeze for at least an hour. The only sugar in these was in the dark chocolate. I consider that to be a healthy indulgence!
Naren prefers the smaller cups or the peanut butter balls, but Svara was utterly delighted at having a HUGE peanut butter cup (she ate half of it for the movie and saved half for the next day).
Zerbert 