Vegan Peanut Butter Cups - Date-Sweetened
I love the all-natural peanut butter cups you find in stores, but they can get quite pricey - usually averaging $1 per peanut butter cup. I found that it was actually quite easy making them at home and you can create some pretty good "store-quality" results.
The best thing about making them at home though is you can control what goes in, and I decided to add dates to the peanut butter as the main sweetener. You can't really tell they are there, but occasionally, you'll get these bursts of sweetness from pieces of dates that may not have gotten all blended.
Tips: This recipe is fairly simple, but there are some key tips to keep in mind while you put the peanut butter cups together. First, in order to create that "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup" look with the fluted edges, you want to be making the chocolates in cupcake liners.
The next tip is to make the peanut butter filling disks nearly the same or as close as possible to the diameter of your cupcake moulds. This keeps you from having to use too much chocolate and for the sides of the peanut butter cups to have too thick a chocolate edge, which I never like.
Vegan Peanut Butter Cups
(Makes 12)
- 16 ounces dark chocolate
- 1/2-3/4 cup natural peanut butter
- 1/2 cup dates, soaked
- 2 teaspoons maple syrup, more to taste
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
- In a double-boiler, melt dark chocolate.
- Meanwhile, in a blender, blend the peanut butter, dates, maple syrup, salt and vanilla until smooth.
- Roll peanut butter filling into 12 equal balls. Flatten the balls into disks with a diameter slightly smaller than the cupcake paper being used.
- Place cupcake paper into muffin tins. Spoon about 1 tablespoon of melted chocolate into each mould.
- Place a peanut butter disk into the center of each mould.
- Fill the rest of the mould with chocolate.
- Chill in refrigerator until chocolate is set.