Recipe: Peanut Butter Cups

Peanut Butter Cups
rec.food.cooking/Christine G. Wechter
From the Nestle's cookbook
Yield: a few dozen small ones

Just as good as Reese's, if not better. Fun to make.

11.5 oz (2 cups) milk chocolate chips
2 tablespoons Crisco
foil or paper candy cups (about 3/4 to 1 inch diameter)

3/4 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy, your choice)
3/4 cup confectioner's sugar, sifted
1 tablespoon melted butter

In a double boiler over hot water, mix chocolate chips and Crisco. Stir and cook until melted. Remove from heat, but keep over hot water.

* See note below about what to do for clumpy chocolate *

Use the back of a spoon, coat the inside of each cup with chocolate. Spread the chocolate all the way up the sides. Put each coated cup on a plate in the freezer before the chocolate can run down the sides -- you may be able to do 3 or 4 before making a trip to the freezer.

Use about 2/3 of the chocolate to coat the cups, keep the rest over hot water.

Mix the peanut butter, sugar, and butter. Roll into balls that will fit inside the cups. Flatten slightly. Take the cups from the freezer, put a ball into each, press lightly. Spoon enough melted chocolate over the top to cover the peanut butter, spread it around until it looks like a peanut butter cup is supposed to look. Put back on plate, when plate is full of finished cups, freeze the plate with cups for about 15 minutes or until chocolate has hardened. Transfer finished cups to freezer bags or mouth.

NOTES:
These keep really well in the freezer, but because you made them fresh, without stabilizers, they melt more easily at room temperature than Reese's peanut butter cups.

Try to use foil cups; they're easier to peel away than the paper variety. You can buy them in cooking stores or sometimes the supermarket. They have very cute seasonally decorated/colored ones around Christmas and Valentine's day.

If you can't find small candy cups or are too *lazy* to fill a few dozen small cups, use foil or paper cupcake papers. You will have large peanut butter cups that can be hard to cut/bite when frozen. And of course you'll have fewer of them.

Very important -- when melting the chocolate, don't let any water -- not even a drop, into the pan. If any gets in, the chocolate will turn clumpy and yucky instead of smooth. You can possibly fix this by adding a small amount of Crisco, with heating and stirring, but it's easier to be very careful the first time around.