chocolate peanut butter cups

Yummy note:  Awesome...a chocolate category on this month's blogger site...I knew I was going to have a tough time trying to figure out what to make now for this month's secret recipe club! Living Lou's blog is fantastic, I love her simple, yet creative recipes that she blogs about. I mean, I think that if we met, we would get along well as I saw many similarities between us.  She mentioned that she is the girl that brings treats to her class or to a friend's house and that is so what I did when I was in school too! Plus, it seems like we both enjoy our fair share of chocolate, too! Living Lou is a young blogger, but she really shows her love and passion for food and cooking on her site.  Let me tell you, I wanted to make this cake, and these cookies, and oh, chocolate ice cream, but these little chocolate peanut butter cups needed some attention instead.  Once I made them, they were being gobbled up in no time and I would suggest you to make atleast a full batch. I didn’t have all of the chocolate on hand that Lou suggested, so I just improvised with the amount that I had and it worked fine. But note, use a mix of the milk and semisweet chocolate as I think that is the real key on what makes these taste way more fantastic than the store bought peanut butter cups. :)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

Adapted from Living Lou’s blog (Lou sourced it from Joy of Baking)

Ingredients:
For the Peanut Butter Filling:1/2 cup peanut butter ( I used chunky, but you can use creamy, too) (also, you could use a sunflower seed butter if you need to substitute for allergy concerns)
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar

For the Chocolate Coating:  
8 oz semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
8 oz milk chocolate, roughly chopped
1 tbsp shortening

Directions:
Melt the chopped up chocolate and shortening in a double boiler or in a microwaveable bowl. While the chocolate is melting, add peanut butter, butter, and salt together in a bowl and heat in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds, or until the butter begins to melt and you can easily stir the mixture together. Then add in the powdered sugar to your peanut butter mix. 

Next, spoon or brush in your melted chocolate into desired pans or cup liners. Make sure you have a nice coating on the bottom and sides of your liners or else the peanut butter mixture might sink to the bottom and poke through during the cooling process. In order to ensure the peanut butter filling was not going to leak out, I added a step and refrigerated my chocolate shells for a few minutes and then added in the peanut butter filling. Note, I love a lot of peanut butter filling, so allowing it to set up a bit more, made it less messy, as you drop your peanut butter globs into the chocolaty shell. After you spoon in the peanut butter filling, cover it completely with the rest of the melted chocolate. If you add in the additional set-up time for your chocolate shells, you may have to reheat your bowl of chocolate if it begins to harden. Let the cups chill and enjoy!

I seriously loved this recipe so much and the results I got were so delicious, I couldn't help taking a few more pictures of them...

Want to know more about the Secret Recipe Club? Check out the others here!