Christmas Treats, Part 1

Yes I realize it is JANUARY but obviously I am behind in posting. Anyway, if I posted ahead of time, then the surprise would be ruined! Um yeeeeah, that's the story I'm sticking to.

Every year around October or November, I embark the yearly tradition of making treat items for close family and friends. Sometimes they are old recipes that I love, and other times they are brand-new and I'm hoping they are a hit! It's a lot of work and even though every freaking year I swear I will NEVER do it again, somehow I end up in the kitchen burning the midnight oil.

This year I made some old favorites: Cook's Illustrated gingerbread cookies, almond toffee (dark chocolate, thank you), and chocolate-orange cookies. But this year I made a couple of new ones as well. The first...

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups!

(I just realized I have pictures of the steps but no pictures of the resulting product! Boo)

Now, you may be asking yourself, why the heck would you want to make your own peanut butter cups when Reese's peanut butter cups are so easily available (and undoubtedly cheaper)? Well, I'll tell you... (1) the novelty (I like to bake for fun okay?) and (2) because there aren't as many ingredients I don't recognize. TBHQ anyone?

I followed this recipe from Baking Bites because it seemed simple enough. The only change I made was to use all crunchy peanut butter because honestly, who keeps two types of peanut butter in their pantry? It was a relatively easy process, except somewhat time-consuming because each stage involved refrigerating the cups to get the chocolate to harden. You want to make these on a nice, lazy afternoon. Not at uh, 10 pm. Not that I know what that is like.

I also found that I ended up using A LOT of chocolate overall. Definitely not cheaper than the Hershey product since I was using higher quality chocolate.

The resulting product didn't taste like a Reese's Peanut Butter cup. It didn't quite have that sickly sweet junk food taste. It tasted more like something from a gourmet chocolate shop, with a crunchy bite to the chocolate and chunks of gooey peanut butter inside. Delicious!

I want to try them with almond butter next time...