Making peanut butter cups from scratch will blow everyone away at the party. Not only will they taste better than Reese’s (and we love Reese’s!), but everyone will come up to you and demand to know how you got the peanut butter inside.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing: that part is dead easy. The hard part is getting the filling consistency right, and that all comes down to what kind of peanut butter you use. If you use a standard peanut butter spread like Skippy or even something fancier but still a “no-stir” variety because it has palm oil keeping it together, it’s easy to just follow this recipe and you should be fine.<\/p>\n
If you’re using an all-natural peanut butter that separates and is therefore kind of soupy even after stirring it, you can go a couple of different directions: either a) freeze it for a while before using it to harden it up somewhat or b) see the notes about adjusting ingredient amounts in the recipe.<\/p>\n
The only other specialized need is to have a mini-muffin pan, ideally one that makes 24 mini-muffins. (Even more ideally and to save yourself time, it would be good to have two such pans, but you can certainly do this with one pan.) You’ll also need mini-muffin cups. Heavier-duty ones like silver or gold foil work best, but you can also use more festively printed paper cups; the melted chocolate may obscure the design a bit, though.<\/p>\n
Use good-quality semi-sweet or dark chocolate for these. We use Guittard semi-sweet chips.<\/p>\n
Keep chilled until serving, especially if you’re bringing these to a picnic on a hot day. Serve either in the cups or out of them; they look beautiful either way. Especially if it’s warm where the party is happening, leave the cups in the liners; the chocolate isn’t tempered, so it will melt easily on the hands. But there are worse problems in the world than chocolatey fingers.<\/p>\n