Why We Like It

If you love the flavor combination of chocolate and peanut butter, we think you will LOVE these peanut butter cups! So easy to make (no baking required!) and they are ideal to keep in the freezer to grab and enjoy an incredibly satisfying sweet treat!

Mix First:

1 1/2 cups almonds
1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats

Place in a small food processor or blender and pulse into a coarse and crumbly mixture.

Transfer to a medium size bowl. (See quick tip.)

Finish the Peanut Butter Layer:

1/4 cup natural peanut butter (or almond butter)
3 Tbsp coconut oil (melted, or vegetable oil)
3 Tbsp pure maple syrup (or honey)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt

Add to the bowl with the almond and oat mixture and stir until well combined.

Using a mini muffin pan, add a spoonful (just under 1 Tbsp) to each mini muffin opening, dividing to make 36 peanut butter cups. Set aside.

Make the Chocolate Topping:

1 1/4 cups dark chocolate chips (approximately 5 oz of dark chocolate)
1 Tbsp coconut oil (or vegetable oil)

Melt the chocolate and coconut oil together. You can either add to a bowl and microwave in 30 second increments until melted, or place in a small saucepan and melt on the stove.

Add 1-2 tsp of chocolate on top of each peanut butter cup, dividing between all of them.

Finish and Freeze:

2 Tbsp cacao nibs (or shaved dark chocolate, OPTIONAL)
1 tsp salt (OPTIONAL, coarse salt works best!)

If desired, sprinkle cacao nibs and coarse salt on top of each peanut butter cup, dividing between all of them.

Freeze until set, at least 30 minutes.

To easily remove the frozen. peanut butter cups from the muffin pan, use a table knife to pop them out, and then store in the freezer (or in the refrigerator) in an airtight container.

Serve and Enjoy!

Quick Tips

If desired, you can make the entire peanut butter layer in your food processor. If you are using a small food processor for the almonds and oats, it may be just as easy to transfer them to a bowl and then stir all the ingredients together, or if your kitchen tool of choice can handle it, go ahead and blend all the ingredients (almonds, oats, peanut butter, oil, etc) together in the food processor.

For more about chocolate, and why it’s important to read the ingredient labels to know exactly what you are getting, check out our coaching tip, Health by Chocolate. And then, read more about why we have fallen in love with cacao nibs in our coaching tip, Is There a Difference Between Cocoa and Cacao?

Thanks to the help of an Eat REAL America member, we have discovered that you can also make these in a 8 inch x 8 inch baking dish, and there are a couple of tricks to keep in mind. They will be easier to cut if you freeze them for about 30 minutes, then remove them from the freezer and use a table knife to pop the entire block out of the baking dish and turn it upside down onto a cutting board. Then, using a sharp knife, cut into squares. (This cutting upside down trick will prevent the chocolate from cracking and the base from falling apart.)