Homemade Peanut Butter Cups {Copycat}

These homemade Peanut Butter Cups, filled with a dough-like peanut butter filling, will pretty much blow your mind. 

The filling for these copycat Reese's peanut butter cups has a secret ingredient which takes the texture and flavor to a whole new level.

What is the secret ingredient in these peanut butter cups? Ground peanut brittle!

By the way, making your own peanut brittle is wonderful, but peanut brittle from a good candy store is also excellent. I used See's Peanut brittle in these peanut butter cups and it was seriously delicious.

I've fallen in love with Stella Park's book Brave Tart: Iconic American Desserts. The book features both traditional American homemade desserts as well as American branded desserts, including Fig Newtons, Oreos, Thin Mints, and Hostess Cupcakes.

To make these peanut butter cups, you will need lots of milk chocolate, some peanut brittle, peanut butter, vanilla, and a bit of kosher salt.

Be sure to use good quality milk chocolate, such as Callebaut or Valrhona. Just make sure it's made with cocoa butter and does not include stabilizers. I do not recommend using chocolate chips because they include ingredients meant to help them hold their shape in high heat.

You will have to temper the chocolate to make sure it re-hardens to a crisp and glossy texture when it cools.

I'm new to tempering chocolate and I'm not even sure if I did it correctly here. The method I used is in Stella's book, and involves melting the chocolate in a bowl over simmering water, and then seeding the melted chocolate with some of the reserved chocolate, and stirring, stirring, and stirring. You need to monitor the temperature of the chocolate while tempering.

To learn more about tempering chocolate using the seeding method, check out this post from David Lebovitz... or get Stella's book and visit pages 292-293.

I used an instant read thermometer to monitor the temperature of the chocolate as I was melting it, making sure it did not exceed 105 degrees F. Once the chocolate was fully melted, I removed it from the heat and stirred in some of the reserved chopped chocolate. The resulting chocolate was smooth and glossy.

How do you make homemade Reese's Peanut Butter Cups? 

All you need is melted and tempered milk chocolate, peanut butter, peanut brittle, some vanilla, and some salt.

You drop some milk chocolate into lined muffin tins, and the fill them with the peanut butter and peanut brittle mixture. You top the top of the peanut mixture with more of the chocolate and tamp it down to flatten the tops. Once you've refrigerated the peanut butter cups, you're done! 

This month, the Fantastical Food Fight theme is candy. Be sure to check out the rest of the candy themed recipes from our group.

This recipe produces 24 2-inch cups. I was thrilled at how these turned out. There is nothing like the combination of peanut butter and chocolate.

I love that all you need is two muffin tins and some paper liners to create these candies.

By the way, the peanut butter/peanut brittle mixture makes an amazing dessert spread on it's own, just so you know!

Check out the rest of the Fantastical Food Fight candy submissions.

An InLinkz Link-up

candy, dessert, peanutbutter

Dessert

American

Yield: 24 peanut butter cupsAuthor: Karen Kerr

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups {Reese's Copycat}

ingredients

• 9 ounces peanut brittle (I used See's)
• 3/4 cup (7 ounces) creamy peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
• 5 cups (30 ounces) finely chopped mild chocolate (seen note above regarding quality)

instructions

1. In a food processor, pulse the peanut brittle until it is finely ground. Add the peanut butter, vanilla, and kosher salt and pulse until you have a thick paste. Transfer the paste to a pastry bag equipped with a 1/2 inch plain pastry tip. 
2. Line two 12 cavity muffin tins with muffin liners. 
3. Melt/temper the chocolate. Add 1 scant tablespoon of the chocolate into the cavities of one of the muffin tins. Pipe a tablespoon of the peanut butter mixture by holding the piping tip just over the milk chocolate. This should push the edges of the chocolate up. Top each cavity with another scant tablespoon of chocolate. Smack the muffin tin down on the work surface. Refrigerate for 30 minute. 
4. Remove the candies from the refrigerator and store at room temperature. 

https://www.karenskitchenstories.com/2018/12/homemade-peanut-butter-cups-copycat.html

Karen's Kitchen Stories