Peanut Butter Cups

This will be the last of the chocolate postings in this batch. I have to admit that I was not completely satisfied with the way my peanut butter cups came out. Oh, don't get me wrong, they're good. But they're not great and certainly not perfect. I'll post what I did and throw out my thoughts on what I plan on doing differently next time. I'll update this post next time I make them, but I'm kind of chocolated out right now and don't expect that to be for a little while.

Peanut Butter Cups

tempered chocolate
small waxed fluted paper cups

4 TBS shortening
2/3 cups peanut butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla

Cream shortening and peanut butter together. Add vanilla and powdered sugar and whip together until slightly fluffy.

Using a pastry brush, coat the inside of the paper cups with tempered chocolate. You do not need to brush all the way up the sides. Put cups in refrigerator to harden. Meanwhile, spoon peanut butter filling into a pastry bag with a medium sized plain-hole tip. When cups are firmed up, squeeze a nice blob of filling in the middle. Then, using a spoon, pour tempered chocolate into the cup to fill it up. I found that it works best if you do not fill the cup all the way to the top.

That's it! Now here are the complaints about my results. I was a little disappointed in the filling because it was too creamy and not peanuty enough. Next time, I will try using real peanut butter (Jif, which I used this time, has too many extra ingredients, I think) and will add more powdered sugar to stiffen it up a bit. With these changes, I think they'll be pretty darn good!