Holiday Recipe: Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

1 cup creamy peanut butter (divided)
4 ½ teaspoons butter, softened
½ cup confectioners sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
4 milk chocolate candy bars (1.55 ounces each), coarsely chopped

Line a miniature muffin tin with miniature muffin paper cups; set aside.

In a small bowl combine ½ cup creamy peanut butter, butter, confectioners sugar and salt until smooth. Set aside.

In a microwaveable bowl, melt the chocolate chips, candy bars and remaining peanut butter; stir until smooth (I heated mine for 30 seconds, stirring and then repeating with 30 seconds until it was melted and smooth).

Take small amounts of the peanut butter/sugar mixture and roll into balls (I flattened mine a little), set on a plate.

Drop a small amount of chocolate mixture in muffin papers, top with peanut butter ball/disc, top with more chocolate. Repeat with remaining chocolate and peanut butter mixture.  Refrigerate until firm. Store in an air tight container.

Makes 3 dozen.

*notes*

1. Make sure your butter is real soft. I'd almost recommend melting it in the microwave to the point it is just before liquid. Mine was just left at room temp for a while to soften and it made the peanut butter/sugar mixture a bit more crumbly and a little more difficult to work with.

2. I used milk chocolate chips instead of the milk chocolate candy bars, what can I say? I had them on hand. And they seem to work just fine.

3. I don't know if it was the size of the peanut butter ball/disc or how much chocolate I was using but I ended up making more chocolate mixture and STILL having extra peanut butter mixture. So far I've made 4 dozen peanut butter cups (still have more peanut butter mixture but I ran out of chocolate chips & muffin cups. So I plan on buying more & making the rest later.