Chocolate Peanut Butter and Almond Butter Cups
Author: 
Serves: makes 24 candies
 
Ingredients
  • 12 ounces dark or milk chocolate
  • ½ cup natural creamy almond or peanut butter (or sunflower seed butter if you’re nut-free)
  • 3 Tablespoons powdered sugar (or 2 Tablespoons powdered sugar + 1 Tablespoon raw honey or pure maple syrup)
  • ½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • ¼ teaspoon fine grain sea salt
  • sea salt flakes or pumpkin seeds for topping, if desired
Instructions
  1. Line a mini muffin tin with paper liners. If you are using a silicone muffin pan, it's probably a good idea to place the pan on a baking sheet so you can transfer it more easily to the refrigerator.
  2. Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Break up the chocolate into small pieces and place in a glass bowl big enough to fit over the pot of boiling water without touching the water (this is a double boiler).
  3. Lower heat so that the water just simmers and place the bowl of chocolate on top of the pot. Melt the chocolate, stirring occasionally, until perfectly smooth. Set bowl aside.
  4. Mix the almond or peanut butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and salt together in a small bowl until smooth. This mixture should be a consistency that allows you to roll it into small balls.
  5. Spoon a teaspoonful of chocolate into each lined cup.
  6. Scoop a teaspoon of the almond/peanut butter mixture and roll into a ball with your hands and press down slightly to flatten a little. Place in the center of each chocolate cup and push down slightly to allow the chocolate to cover the sides, but not the top of the almond/peanut butter disc.
  7. Pour another teaspoon of chocolate on top of the cups covering the peanut/almond butter mixture completely. Use the back of your teaspoon to smooth out the chocolate on the tops of each cup.
  8. Sprinkle with a pinch of sea salt or a couple pumpkin seeds if you like and place in the refrigerator for a few hours to harden. If you need to speed this up, place in the freezer.
  9. Because the chocolate is not tempered, you should keep these refrigerated.
Notes
I use this silicone mini muffin pan.  Each individual mold measures 1½ inches across the top.  I found two mini baking liners at Michaels which worked perfectly, but these were just slightly too big for my pan.
Recipe by Pamela Salzman at https://pamelasalzman.com/homemade-chocolate-peanut-butter-cups-almond-butter-cups-recipe/