Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

The hardest part of these blogs for me is writing the blurbs.  I figure that I could probably just post recipes and pictures, but that seems awfully impersonal and unchallenging-and an objective of this blog is to challenge myself.

The problem is, there isn’t really much to say at any given moment.  I struggle to decide what to talk about and then I write a whole little blurb, realize it has no relevance to the recipe, and delete it.

So, maybe I need to just ramble a bit, and eventually I will find some inspiration.  When that inspiration comes I’m sure the blog posts will roll in, but until then, I’m vacationing in Taiwan, eating exotic food, and daydreaming about these homemade peanut butter cups.

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

• 2 cups milk chocolate chips (1 bag)*
• 1 TBS shortening or butter
• ¼ cup butter, softened
• ½ cup peanut butter
• ¾ cup powdered (confectioners) sugar
• 2/3 cups crushed graham crackers*
• ½ tsp salt

1. Melt together the chocolate chips and 1 TBS shortening or butter.
2. In another bowl, stir together the butter, peanut butter, sugar, crushed crackers, and salt.
3. Set out cupcake liners (~30 mini).
4. Divide the filling into ~30 parts, about 1 ½ TSP’S each part. Freeze the parts until hardened, and then shape each into a small disk.
5. In each cupcake liner, place about one TSP on the melted chocolate.
6. Press one part of the filling on top of the melted chocolate.
7. Top the recipe of the cupcake liner with chocolate.  The filling should be totally submerged.
8. Repeat the process for all cups, freeze until hardened, and then enjoy!

*I used semi sweet since I didn’t have milk chocolate.  They were still delicious.

**I used crushed ritz crackers

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Homemade Three Musketeers Bars

Two years ago I knitted my whole family scarves for Christmas.  Wait…that’s not right.  Oh yeah, I started five scarves and finished two, three are still half-made and somewhere in the back of my closet.  Last year I think I forget to buy presents altogether.  As you can probably tell, I’m not exactly the greatest at gifting during the holidays, but this was my year for redemption..

One of the gifts I made were these homemade three musketeer bars for my other half-brother Phil.  They were extremely simple to make, and they turned out amazing.  I ate myself silly on these little bite of chocolate heaven, but shhh, don’t tell Phil that the recipe made a lot more than the amount he received!

I always say to try out the recipes I post, but I’m really seriously about this one! With only three ingredients, you cannot go wrong and even if  you do-there’s no way the end result won’t be absolutely delicious!

Homemade Three Musketeer Bars Recipe

• 4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (2 regular sized bags)
• 1 (8-10 ounce) container of frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 2 tsps shortening or butter

Making the filling:

1. In a double boiler, melt 2 cups (1 bag) of chocolate chips.  Pour the chocolate in a large bowl.
2. Whisk the chocolate until no longer hot (lukewarm or cooler), and then fold in the thawed whipped topping.
3. Place wax paper on the bottom and sides of an 8×8 inch pan, and then spread the filling in the pan.
4. Freeze the filling for an hour, and then cut into whichever shapes are desired (I made small rectangles).

Coating the filling:

1. In the same double boiler as before, melt the remaining bag of chocolate chips along with the 2 tsps of shortening or butter.
2. Once the chocolate is completely homogenous, one by one, dip the frozen filling shapes in the chocolate, and then place on parchment paper to dry.
3. Store the homemade three musketeers bars in a freezer, or fridge.
4. ENJOY!