Peanut Buttercups

By total accident, I happened to run across "How To Make Homemade Peanutbutter Cups" at The Hungry Mouse.

And i couldn't resist. She made it look so simple and wonderful and I had to go out to the store that very minute and get the ingredients to make this.

There are four. yes FOUR ingredients to this amazing creation.

They are:

Chocolate Chips (2 medium sized bags)
Peanutbutter ( 1 cup )
Powdered Sugar (1/2 a cup)
Vanilla. (1 tsp)

(Plus cupcake liners.)

That's it! I swear!

For the filling:
mix the peanut butter & sugar well. Add the vanilla & set aside.

For the chocolate shell, melt the chips in a double boiler, mircowave, or like me, go all ghetto & put one small pot with the chocolate in it , resting on top of a slightly larger pot with boiling water inside.

I don't have a double boiler, and this was the first time I've worked with chocolate. But hey, it worked! I set the water in the larger pot on high & once it got to a good rolling boil, I placed the smaller pan of chocolate chips on top & turned down the heat a little. I stirred it constantly until it was totally melted

Once the chocolate has melted, spoon a little bit into each cupcake liner. Then, spead the chocolate up the sides of the liner & leaving a healthy dolop of chocolate in the bottom of the liner. It should look like this:

Once all the liners are totally coated, place the muffin tin in the refridgerator for about an hour until the chocolate has become solid again.

Then remove the shell-filled muffin tin from the fridge & fill each shell at least half way full of the peanutbutter mix. More or less depending upon how you like your peanutbutter to chocolate ratio.
Then start the water boiling again & put the chocolate back on to get it warm and soft again. And at this point, if you're like me, you'll need to add more chips so you'll have enough chocolate for the covering.

Then spoon the warm chocolate over the peanutbutter in each shell. Be sure the peanutbutter it totally covered & that the chocolate completely touches the edges of the cupcake liner so that a seal is formed over the peanutbutter.

Then put the muffin tin back in the fridge so that it all becomes solid.

Technically, I suppose you should probably wait at least a good 2 hours for it to totally solidify. But i just couldn't wait that long. I waited for about 45 minutes & just couldn't stand to wait one more minute.

They were mostly solid. Solid enough.

And this is what it looked like when I took a bite.


Now, please note, these are NOT for diabetics. In fact, about half way through, I thought was going to go into a sugar coma. Even my daughter couldn't finish a whole one. My teeth hurt. But, dang!! It was worth it! And yes, ohhh yes, I will be making these again!