de facto redhead

As I mentioned last week, Ami has gone vegan for the month of March, and her ambitions, combined with my new interest in cooking, led me to the cookbook section at Chapters on Friday. I was in Toronto for a meeting, it was a sunny, warm day, and I thought a leisurely browse seemed like a good idea. First, I looked at the cooking magazines. Too much in price, and too much in selection! Next, I gravitated toward the healthy-eating, vegetarian, et al. section, and it took me about two minutes to feel overwhelmed – again – with all the choices. Annoyance was next, so I settled on buying the newest Toronto Life, and then left and went to my meeting, after which I came home, had a nap (Toronto and transit is tiring!), and made the easy decision to conquer this week’s recipe, which I also went vegan for. Hello, Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups!

INGREDIENTS
1⁄2 cup Earth Balance butter
3⁄4 cup crunchy peanut butter (preferably unsweetened and unsalted)
3⁄4 cup graham cracker crumbs or 10 graham cracker squares, crushed
1⁄4 cup maple sugar or other granulated sweetener
1 cup grain-sweetened, non-dairy chocolate or carob chips
1⁄4 cup soy, rice, or nut milk
1⁄4 cup chopped pecans, almonds, or peanuts

DIRECTIONS
Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.
Set aside.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the peanut butter, graham cracker crumbs, and maple sugar, and mix well. Remove the mixture from the heat.
Evenly divide the mixture, approximately 2 tablespoons per cup, among the muffin cups.
Combine the chocolate and milk in another pan.
Stir over medium heat until the chocolate has melted.
Spoon the chocolate evenly over the peanut butter mixture.
Top with chopped nuts.
Place in the refrigerator to set for at least 2 hours before serving.

My ingredients – all vegan! (Well, at least I HOPE they’re all vegan; I couldn’t find any graham crackers/crumbs that fit the bill, so to speak, and these HoneyMaid ones seemed acceptable, judging from the ingredient list…)

Ami’s ingredients, and a peek into Alicia Silverstone’s cookbook, The Kind Diet, where our recipe came from.

The bottom peanut-butter layer of my cups. Greatness awaits.

Ami’s cups, also steps away from greatness.

My cups, all finished, and screaming at me to get chilled, y’all.

One of Ami’s peanut-butter cups, sprung from the confines of the muffin tin.

As far as the directions for this recipe go, there isn’t much to criticize because they’re so straightforward. I put a bit too much of the peanut-butter mixture in the first half of the cups, so the back six ended up a bit smaller in size, but that obviously didn’t end up affecting the taste…I’ll talk further about taste in a minute. Other thoughts: Ami made her cups before me, and she warned me that they would seem REALLY runny – she was right, but since I knew what was up, I still felt confident, and now you can, too, thanks to our dual test-run! The chocolate mixture also ran a bit thin (meaning there wasn’t quite enough), and Ami’s completely ran out, so she had to quickly make a second batch, but you can decide what to do based on your love of chocolate.

Once ready to set/chill, Ami and I agree that skipping the fridge and heading straight for the freezer is the way to go. The cups are bit on the soft side if kept in the fridge, and but stay firm and DELICIOUS if set and kept in the freezer. They also don’t melt, once you take them out, versus the more rapid softening that occurs if coming from the fridge.

There were no substitutions this week because we chose a vegan recipe that we both used vegan ingredients for, and while I did buy graham crackers instead of crumbs, they were easily crushable by way of a solid beating with the rolling pin.

Now, the score. Ami rated this recipe a 4.75 out of 5, and the reason for the docked 0.25 points was because of her scramble to melt extra chocolate to cover the rest of her cups. I would rate it the same because while I ate five in 24 hours, I also had the minor issue with the uneven peanut-butter layering of the cups. But really, we’re nit-picking. Ami’s batch of 12 cups was gone the next day, and Chris was begging her to make another dozen within 24 hours. And for me, my foray into vegan eating was well-received. The use of Earth Balance butter, soy milk, cane sugar, and vegan chocolate chips produced no discernible difference in taste, and while I joked to Ami about my worry that the vegan chocolate chips might taste like dust, I can now eat some humble pie and admit the success of my vegan peanut butter cups. Make them and love them!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 21st, 2011 at 7:04 am and is filed under Baking, Cooking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.