Peanut Buttercups with Marshmallow Fluff

Most stores here in the Netherlands don’t carry peanut buttercups and thus I never ate one until some time earlier this year. Heck, I didn’t even had a liking for peanut butter at the time, I was mostly wondering what all the fuss was about. In hindsight I think the very first one I ate did me in for good. By now I know most stores in quite a few cities here that sell them and it took me quite a few tries to come up with a recipe that resembles the original most in my opinion. My boyfriend is a huge fan of marshmallow fluff so for this particular batch I added it to the mix. Feel free to leave it out if you prefer the original taste though.


Ingredients

For 12 regular sized muffin cups:

15 g finely ground biscuit crumbs
65 g peanut butter
75 g powdered sugar
18 g unsalted butter
200 g milk chocolate (Hersheys if you can get your hands on it)
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
½ teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt

Optional: 100 g marshmallow fluff (about half a jar)


Method

Combine peanut butter, softened butter, powdered sugar, biscuit crumbs and vanilla in mixing bowl. Knead until thoroughly combined and add salt to taste (in my opinion you should add just a tiny bit more salt after the point where you think that you recreated the perfect Reeses saltyness, since the chocolate you will be adding later seems to weaken the salty taste a bit).

Prepare 12 cupcake liners in a muffin pan, don’t cut the sides yet.

Melt chocolate using double boiler method and stir in shortening until completely dissolved.

Drop about a teaspoon of melted chocolate in each cupcake liner and spread evenly across the bottom (use half of the chocolate or a little less, you’ll be needing the rest for the top layers). Place muffin pan in the refrigerator until chocolate is hardened, about 15 minutes.

Divide peanut butter mixture into 12 portions and flatten into chocolate filled cupcake liners, making sure that the peanut butter mixture doesn’t reach all the way to the sides.

Optional: scoop about a tablespoon of marshmallow fluff on top of peanut butter mixture in liners. Spread with the back of a spoon.

Re-melt leftover chocolate, again using double boiler method. Spoon the melted chocolate on top of the peanutbutter (/marshmallow fluff) and fill until the peanut butter(/marshmallow fluff) is covered.

Place muffin pan back in the fridge until peanut butter cups are fully hardened. Trim off the sides of the muffin liners for a more finished look to your peanut buttercups (or just devour them).