Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Valentines Day gets a lot of hate, you know?  I get the arguments.... "It's a product of Hallmark", "More like single awareness day!", and the one that probably rings the most truth: "Why show your love on only one day of the year?"  While Valentine's day can sometimes get us down, let's just take it for what it is.  A little overdone cheesy love stuff for everyone to celebrate.  Let me tell you, I had my fill this year when I had to frost one heart shaped cake after another at work and am now probably getting carpal tunnel from holding my offset spatula.  Even so, cheesy heart shaped things are cute.  There's no getting around it.  I'm bringing you an easy way of showing your love more than one day a year!  Homemade peanut butter cups!  I made them for my valentine, hence the heart shape.  But you can make these in any shape you want.  Show your loved ones you care on a day other than February 14!  Impress the pants off of them!  They don't know these are super easy!

Step 1: Figure out what you are putting them in.  You can use cupcake tins and liners, or the mini versions.  I lucked out and already had this heart shaped silicone ice tray from IKEA.  The silicone helps because you can move it around to unmold your chocolates.  I think IKEA still has them.  Super cheap!

Step 2:  Melt your chocolate in a double boiler, or in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time so the chocolate doesn't seize.  I used a mixture of milk and semi-sweet chocolate.  Use what you prefer in peanut butter cups.  The whole time I was making these I was only thinking about the Milk Chocolate PB Cups from Trader Joes.  If you haven't had them, get up, leave, and go buy some.  Seriously I don't even love chocolate and peanut butter together, but those get me every time.

Step 3:  Brush your chocolate on the bottom and sides of your molds.  Make sure it covers the whole bottom and there are no holes.  Freeze until the chocolate hardens.

Step 4:  Mix peanut butter with powdered sugar.  Add some honey or vanilla if you so choose. 

Step 5:  Take out your chocolate molds.  Pipe peanut butter mixture or use a small spoon to fill molds with peanut butter a little less than all the way full. 

Step 6: Cover peanut butter filled molds with chocolate. 

Step 7:  Scrape off excess.  Touch up any areas where you can still see peanut butter.  Freeze again until hard.

Step 8:  Unmold your peanut butter cups!  Enjoy!  Share with your loved ones!

Peanut Butter Bundt Cake

 

I've acquired a bundt.  It has been my dream for a few months, but haven't actually taken the time to go buy one.  Lucky for me, my friend's mom gave me her extra bundt pan!

I've googled some history of the bundt.  Not only do they make a beautiful cake, there is a method to their madness.  The bundt was formed so that it could cook a denser cake batter.  The hole in the middle allows heat to penetrate heavy cake batters from all sides.  Smart!  Supposedly, the word bundt comes from the German word "bund" which means a gathering of people, or a bond.  The t was added for good form, and to trademark the dish.

This history is fitting for my first bundt.  Hannah and I made it together in Baltimore.  Hannah's and my bond of friendship is pretty grade A in my book.  We roughed it up in Africa and spent almost every day together for 4 months in a village where no one speaks your language, you do your bathroom business in a hole in the ground, and you have no water or electricity.  You try to spend 24/7 with a stranger in the village and not get sick of them! For Hannah and I, and most of our program luckily, it worked.  The bond between us was clearly pretty strong.  You know when people say that stronger relationships form after extreme situations?  Try 4 months of extreme.

One way we've kept it up is with our love for food and baking, as stated before.  Hannah and I send each other drool worthy recipes daily.  We oo and aaahh over tastespotting.  We talk about our woes of our lackluster healthy lunches and not having daily sweet treats in the office. We link each other to joythebaker.com and wish that she was our friend! We both were anxiously waiting her cookbook's debut and bought it within the first week!

Since my Baltimore trip was coming up, we decided it would be fitting to bake one of Joy's recipes.  It happened.  It was glorious.  It was Joy's Peanut Butter Birthday Cake with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. Peanut Butter + Cream Cheese.  How great of a bond is that?  Go make it.  Now.  I'm not even one of those crazy peanut butter people and this cake is obsess-worthy.

Bundts are inviting. Their ring form and pretty edges are for sharing.  With this peanut butter cake, everyone will want to be your friend. You'll create bonds with all the neighbors.  Remember that bond that arises from sharing extreme experiences?  Get ready for it. It's gonna happen. This cake is for real!