Saturday, June 19, 2010

Not Reese's Fancy Peanut Butter Cups

Sometimes my crafts aren't fabric/bead/decoration crafts.  Sometimes they are food crafts!  Today's post is a food craft.  I'll start with a little bit about my "kitchen self".   I really don't care for cooking.  When I lived alone I ate a lot of fast food and things out of boxes.  My specialty dinners are grilled cheese and fried egg sandwiches, which I would make a lot because they took all of 5 minutes to prepare.  I also made a lot of ground beef + dishes (as in ground beef plus 2 or 3 other things).  I hate making things that use more than one pan because I hate doing dishes.  That being said, I like baking, which usually uses tons of dishes, so that doesn't really make sense, but there you have it!  I'm way more interested in making desserts and things that really have no nutritional purpose than in making things that will keep me alive and healthy(ish).  I pretty much only save recipes for sweets.  Like this one: home made peanut butter cups!

I love Reese's peanut butter cups.  Especially the eggs that come out at Easter, and the other shapes that come out at other holidays.  I'm all about the peanut butter in these things - I eat off as much of the chocolate as I can before I actually take a bite into them.  Stephen is all about the whole chocolate peanut butter experience though.  When I showed him this recipe he of course wanted to make them, but dark-chocolate style (so did I!)  So we went to the store and bought some fancy dark chocolate, peanut butter and powdered sugar - this recipe is super basic and open for lots of variation BTW!

We decided to make ours mini-cups instead of the giant cups found on the instructables page.  I was thinking if they turned out to be easy and good, then I would make some for a party at work.  As it turns out, they aren't hard at all, but very time consuming.  And they are good, but they ain't Reeses.  I decided to scrap the idea of making enough for work and we just enjoyed the ones we made all by ourselves.  I didn't take a lot of photos for this one (my hands got really messy!) but here are a few:

Here are my dozen cups filled with peanut butter and getting their chocolate top.

Done! Fresh out of the fridge and ready to taste!

And here's a really blurry one of the inside of a cup.

My final thoughts on this project? These did turn out pretty good, but we used super dark chocolate so they definitely tasted like "fancy food" which Reese's is not.  I also think I put too much chocolate and not enough peanut butter.  I ALSO think that this batch would have turned out better if we'd opted to do giant cups instead of these little ones, because more peanut butter would have been in them (but as you recall, I'm all about the peanut butter). So, with a little tweaking I think these could be great, and I'd probably make them again some day, but it's questionable whether they would ever be as good as real Reese's, which aren't that expensive, and a heck of a lot easier to get your hands on.

9 comments:

Sarah said...

My mouth is watering!

Teresa said...

Projects are fun especially if they are food related. Hehehe! :)

Lynda said...

Too much chocolate? I can't believe that! There's never enough chocolate. I made these years ago and just loved them. Looks like you've inspired me to make them again. Thanks.

Jenny Bolech said...

Lynda - chocolate is good, but I'm all about the peanut butter :) Have fun making them!

Stephanie said...

MMMmm those look amazing!!

Missus D said...

what can i say except...YUM!!!

Megan V said...

Oooh! I used to experiment with making these when I was a kid!! I would melt chocolate chips in a little glass bowl. Then plop some peanut butter, and cover it with a bit more chocolate. Then I'd stick it in the freezer for a while to harden and then eat it! Worked for me :) The little mini muffin cups look like a good idea :)

Laura Maurer Storms said...

I'm excited to see that there is not any milk in this peanut butter - because like you, I am ALL ABOUT THE PEANUT BUTTER, but as you know, my husband can't do dairy. Maybe we will try these someday... After we're done making cheese & beer. :)

Jenny Bolech said...

Are you back from the wilderness? Was it fun? Stephen made some goat cheese last week but it tasted like lemons...