Vegan Peanut Butter Cups

What’s better than Peanut Butter and Chocolate?  Nothing. We’ve determined this from my Peanut Butter Balls.  One night, I wanted some peanut butter balls, but I didn’t have enough peanut butter for them.  So, next best thing? Peanut Butter cups.

These little babies only have 5 ingredients. And even better, 5 pure / from scratch ingredients, I might add!  Virgin coconut oil, cocoa powder, our homemade vanilla extract, pure NH maple syrup, and our homemade peanut butter.

Super simple. In a small pan on medium / low I mixed the oil and cocoa powder.

Then added the maple syrup and vanilla and mixed

until smooth.

Poured just about 1/4 of the way full in the liners,

then a little plop of peanut butter in the center.  In retrospect, I should have used more peanut butter for a better peanut butter to chocolate ratio.

Then I topped them off with the remaining chocolate…

…and gave the tin a gentle tap on the table to even out the chocolate.

Into the freezer for a few hours and we had these lovely from scratch peanut butter cups!  These have a pretty high taste of coconut from the oil and they’re softer than a traditional peanut butter cup.  In hindsight, probably too much oil for these little guys and I’ll cut it down a bit next time and using a refined coconut oil would have helped cut some of the strong coconut flavor.  But I personally liked the added coconut flavor and although my husband made a comment about how he didn’t like it as much,  it didn’t stop him from eating them before I was even done taking photos, so it couldn’t have been too much of deterrent 😉

Peanut Butter Cups from Scratch

• Difficulty: Easy
• Print

• 1 cup of cocoa powder
• 1 cup of coconut oil
• 1/3 cup of maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup of peanut butter – divided

In a small pan on medium low, melt coconut oil and mix with cocoa powder.  Add maple syrup and vanilla and mix well until smooth.

Line a muffin tin with liners and then fill each liner 1/4 way full.  Add a large teaspoon – 2 size dollop of peanut butter to center of cup.  With remaining chocolate, top off the cups with just enough chocolate to cover the peanut butter.

Gently lift tray and tap on work surface to even and level the chocolate.

Freeze for at least 2 hours or until chocolate is completely set.

Note: these cups are on the softer side even after frozen.