sea salt chocolate maple peanut butter cups.

So I had this bottle of maple syrup, and I wanted to do more with it than consume it by the ramekin-fuls with waffles. I always imagined that maple syrup would be good with peanut butter, chocolate, bacon, coffee... and thats how I ended up with chocolate maple peanut butter cups. The sea salt was an after thought, but a very well thought of one.

I did some serious recipe unearthing as usual, for the best rendition of Reese's famous peanut butter cups. A few clicks here and there, and I discovered a recommendation for crushed graham crackers in the peanut butter filling. I thought that was brilliant! Crushed crackers could give the filling the familiar slightly dry and crumbly texture without excessive use of powdered sugar. I still find Reese's peanut butter filling a mystery- it's dry-ish yet with a tinge of salt, so there couldn't be a whole lot of powdered sugar. What do they use to achieve that texture then?

Anyway, back to my peanut butter cups. To make a maple version, I simply subbed the sugar for maple syrup. Because though there wasn't any powdered sugar to hold it together, I relied on the crushed grahams to do that job. The filling was still a little wet though, next time I would add more crackers to the mix.

Before I could even fill the cups, I had to make the chocolate shell. I decided to have a little fun and give tempering a go, but the chocolate took so long to cool to the proper temperature that I gave up halfway and I got a half tempered chocolate shell. Ha! At least the outside was shiny and the chocolate had a little bit of a snap to it. I used a mini muffin pan with no paper/ foil liners by the way.

Fast forward to a few hours later and I finally sank my teeth into one of these cuties. I wished that the maple flavour was more pronounced but I could barely keep myself from shoving down another.

Sea Salt Chocolate Maple Peanut Butter Cups
makes 12 mini muffin sized ones

This is a revised version- changes to the cracker quantity has been reflected.

200g bittersweet chocolate
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup crushed graham crackers
sea salt, for sprinkling

Mix together the peanut butter, maple syrup and crushed grahams. Refrigerate.

In a double boiler, melt the chocolate and brush it on the bottom and insides of the mini muffin tin. It's okay to be generous, just make sure that there is enough left for the top. Place the pan in a freezer to set, about 10 minutes.

Remove the muffin tin from the freezer and divide your peanut butter mixture evenly amongst each cup. Spoon more melted chocolate on top, sprinkle some sea salt and place the tin back into the freezer until the chocolate on top has set. After the chocolate has set, you can, of course, transfer it back into the fridge or if you are not in a hurry, you could let the chocolate set in the fridge instead of the freezer.

Linked to Cast Part Wednesday, These Chicks Cooked, Full Plate Thursday, Sweet Treats Thursday, Sweet Tooth Friday, Sweets for a Saturday and Sweet Indulgences Sunday.