Chocolate Almond Butter Cups

*GUEST ENTREE ENTRY*

I wanted to make homemade peanut butter cups around the holidays to give out as gifts. As I was reading up on various recipes, I stumbled across one using almond butter and honey. This sounded very interesting to me so I gave it a try.

5 oz Toll House dark chocolate 53% morsels

3 oz Toll House milk chocolate morsels

1/2 cup natural almond butter

2 Tbsp. honey

1 Tbsp. powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 tsp. fine grain salt

sea salt flakes for topping

assorted mini cupcake liners

Before you start in on the chocolate, combine the almond butter, honey, sugar, vanilla, and salt together. I believe I had to end up adding a little more confectionary sugar to get everything to stick together and "ball up". After that, break apart a teaspoon of the mixture and roll it in your palms until you have a small ball. Repeat until gone. I popped these into the fridge to keep their form while I prepared the chocolate.

Melt the chocolate in a double broiler (which is a bowl resting on top of a pot of simmering water). Stirring until smooth.

Place your liners on a cookie sheet. Spoon enough chocolate into the bottom of the liner to coat it along with some of the edges. Tilt and twist the liner around as to completely coat the bottom of the liner and the edges. Then place the mixture ball in the center of each of the chocolate lined liners. After that, spoon more chocolate over the ball as to completely cover it in chocolate. Once all the chocolate is spooned out, I lightly tapped the cookie sheet on the counter, using the vibrations to even out the chocolate on top. While the chocolate was still wet, I sprinkled the sea salt flakes for topping. Then pop it in the fridge to set.

I was amazed at how easy it is to make a homemade almond/peanut butter cup.  I handed them out as Christmas presents this year. Honestly it was so long ago, I cannot remember if the recipients liked them or not... but I did!