Heart Shaped Peanut Butter Cups Recipe

Instructions

INGREDIENTS -

STEP 1 -

Mix the peanut butter, powdered sugar, salt and vanilla until smooth.

STEP 2 -

Fold a piece of parchment paper in half then transfer the peanut butter to one half, fold the other side of the paper over so the peanut butter is in the middle of the two sheets, and smooth the peanut butter mixture to an even ½ inch thickness. Set this in the freezer for about 20 minutes. *It is easier to work with frozen peanut butter mixture, but you can certainly do this with softer peanut butter, it will just be a little bit harder to work with.

While that is chilling you can start with the chocoolate.

STEP 3 -

Melt the chocolate to package instruction and carefully smooth it into each corner of the heart molds with a small rubber spatula.

You want to have a solid and even coating on the hearts, for this carefully turn the mold around and look at it from each direction to make sure no spots are missed.

I like to have the silicone mold on a tray or plate while doing this as it helps with stabilizing the tray while the chocolate is setting up.

You will have plenty of chocolate left over in your melting dish after this step, you will use this in the next steps. Leave the tray on the counter while the peanut butter filling chills.

STEP 4 -

Remove the filling mixture from the freezer and free hand cut or use a cookie cutter to cut out hearts that will easily fit into the center of the chocolate hearts.

STEP 5 -

The chocolate should still be very liquidy and the peanut butter hearts should easily push right into the chocolate.

Try to press them in just enough that they are in all the way-but not so far that they would likely push through to the chocolate that would be the top part of the hearts once removed from the molds.

STEP 6 -

Pour the rest of the chocolate over the hearts and carefully smooth out so the chocolate evenly fills all of the space around and over the peanut butter filling. Try not to add so much that the bottoms will be mounted up with the chocolate, aim for a flat bottom.

STEP 7 -

Set in the freezer to chill for about 20 minutes. 

STEP 8 -

Remove the completely solid hearts from the mold, I like to use food safe gloves for this to avoid fingerprints.

STEP 9 -

Use the remaining melted chocolate to drizzle over the top of some or all of the hearts. Sprinkle nonpareils on some.

STEP 10 -

I used clean food tweezers to apply a little edible gold leaf on two of the hearts. The trick to using gold leaf is to get the surface of the item you will be decorating just a tiny bit wet. This can be tricky with chocolate so try to add just tiny droplets of water on the exact spot you want the gold. The gold leaf holds up perfectly fine in changing temperatures such as room temp, the fridge, freezer and then back to room temp again.

STEP 11 -

ENJOY!