Salted Caramel-Peanut Butter Cups

Okay, so you guys have a lot of food coming your way this weekend, so get excited! But the first post I'm going to do are Salted Caramel-Peanut Butter Cups. Yeap, you heard me right, they're pretty friggin' delish. So obviously, I live in Savannah. So on one of our daily walks the other day, we passed a small cafe & chocolate place on the way to downtown. It's called Wright Square Cafe for any of you whoever plan to visit! It's a charming little place, and they have the most amazing sea salt peanut butter cups. So I decided to kind of follow their recipe, but I added a salted caramel layer on top of the peanut butter. It's sooooo good. Warning: you might get addicted, but don't say I didn't warn you. Enjoy :)

Salted Caramel-Peanut Butter Cups

For the Salted Caramel:

1C Sugar

6T Unsalted Butter, Room Temperature

1t Sea Salt

2/3C Heavy Cream, Room Temperature

For the Peanut Butter:

1C Creamy Peanut Butter

¼C Honey

For the Cups:

1 Mini Cupcake Baking Pan

1 Pack of Mini Cupcake Tins

1 Bag of Semi Sweet Chocolate (Milk or White Chocolate will work)

Sea Salt

Directions:

1. To make the salted caramel, get a large sautee pan and bring it up to medium-high heat. Pour in sugar and keep continuously whisking until the sugar begins to melt and the lumps dissolve. This sugar will begin to turn a light caramel color, at this point add in the salt and all of of the butter. The mixture will begin to bubble, but keep stirring. Finally, take the pan off the heat, and pour in the heavy cream (once again, it will bubble, but just keep stirring) and stir until it is a smooth, consistent sauce. Pour into a container and let cool while you prepare the peanut butter and the chocolate cups.

2. To make the peanut butter mixture, blend the peanut butter and honey in a food processor until incorporated. As a side note, I like when my peanut butter is gooey and oozes out the sides of the cup. So if you would like your peanut butter mixture to be more firm then you could substitute powdered sugar. Set this mixture aside until the cups are ready.

3. Next, line the mini cupcake pan with cupcake tin liners. Then, make a double boiler in order to melt the chocolate. In order to temper the chocolate, melt ¾ of the bag in the boiler, saving ¼ to mix in after it is melted. Stir in the unmelted chips into the melted chips until smooth and blended. Next, spoon in a tablespoon of chocolate into the bottom of the tins. Spread this mixture up the sides until there is a thin layer of chocolate. Place the pan in the freezer until the chocolate hardens.

4. Once the cups are hardened, start to layer to the peanut butter mixture, then the salted caramel, and the top with a teaspoon of melted chocolate. Smooth and swirl the melted chocolate on top and then top with a pinch of sea salt. Return the pan to the freezer until hardened.

5. Serve cold so that the chocolate does not melt. Keep refrigerated for about 2 weeks.

source: salted caramel.