Salted Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Peanut Butter Cups

Salted dark chocolate pumpkin peanut butter cups are a more wholesome version of your classic Reese's. With a subtle pumpkin flavor and spice, they're the perfect little treats to celebrate fall and Halloween! 

Can we have a conversation that revolves entirely around peanut butter cups? K cool -- I knew you would be all about that.

To start, there is probably not much selling I need to do when it comes to a recipe embodying the following qualities:

• Salted.
• Dark Chocolate.
• Pumpkin.
• Peanut Butter Cups.

You had me at salted. And dark chocolate. And just all of it, really.

Here's the thing -- Halloween is coming up, which means Reese's peanut butter cups. And while Reese's peanut butter cups have always been delicious and were definitely in my Halloween Candy Haul Top Three every year of my childhood, they are totally full of preservatives. I know, I KNOW. I'm totally killing the joy of a Reese's peanut butter cup right now.

But I mean, think about it: you'd really be better off buying some all-natural peanut butter cups (like the kind from Justin's), OR dipping a bar of pure, solid dark chocolate into some peanut butter. Not that I've ever done that.

Okay obviously I have.

And while the occasional Reese's emergency is completely understandable, friends, the bottom line here is that knowing how to make a chocolate peanut butter cup is LIFE. CHANGING. Oh yes, all-caps was necessary. And taking it a step further with salted dark chocolate pumpkin peanut butter cups?? Cue multiple emojis with heart eyes.

Salted Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Peanut Butter Cups: How-to

So first things first: let's just all agree right now to be salted dark chocolate pumpkin peanut butter cups addicts and be completely okay with it. This is a safe space for:

• Coming home from work after a stressful day and needing a minimum of five PB cups because they yield instant happiness.
• Waking up in the morning and popping a couple cups in your mouth and calling it pre-workout energy.
• Resisting your kids' Halloween candy by eating numerous homemade PB cups and knowing that actually, you have it better.
• General inadvertent consumption of too many peanut butter cups (sometimes, you just don't realize you ate seven until you look at the empty wrappers and say, "Who ate all my PB cups?!").

Before we get started on the pumpkin peanut butter filling, you'll need mini cupcake liners and a mini muffin tin. If you don't have a mini muffin tin, you could probably just line them up on a baking sheet or in some other container, but just make sure they're easy for you to transfer to the freezer for a few minutes here and there.

You can get the liners all ready before or after you prep the filling and chocolate - up to you!

The Pumpkin Peanut Butter Filling

Okay, so this stuff is good, and you can totally get away with eating some of it plain because there will be a little bit extra.

You'll need ½ cup pitted dates (soak them in water for a bit if they're dry), 1 ½ cups peanut butter (the natural, goopy kind), ⅓ cup pure pumpkin (I just use the canned kind), and a bit of pumpkin pie spice and vanilla extract.

Pulse it all in a food processor until it forms a crumbly dough. From there, you'll be able to form small "patties" that you'll place in the middle of the dark chocolate layers, which brings me to...

THE CHOCOLATE

For the chocolate part, you'll need a couple bags of some high quality dark chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips (or about 20 oz. worth of dark chocolate in whatever form), and some coconut oil. Semi-sweet chocolate chips are delicious, though my personal preference always leans to the less sweet side of the spectrum, so I love extra dark chocolate. But if what you have on hand is semi-sweet, and you don't want to make a special trip to the store, you are still in for serious deliciousness.

And apparently, easy deliciousness, because all you really have to do for this step is melt the dark chocolate in the microwave with a tablespoon of coconut oil. I like to do it in 30 second increments with stirring in between until everything is completely melted and uniform.

At this point, you need your muffin tin liners to fill with a little bit of melted chocolate, so quick get those ready if you haven't yet. Then, your peanut butter cup adventure basically looks like this:

Fill with chocolate. Freeze. Fill with pumpkin peanut butter patty. Fill with chocolate. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt. Freeze. Remove from freezer. Try to not to eat them all.

Actually, don't try 😉

And that's all there is to it! These salted dark chocolate pumpkin peanut butter cups are exactly what you need to get into the Halloween/fall spirit (you probably already got there with pumpkin spice lattes. but the excitement about those can only last so long, right??), and they're made with wholesome ingredients, AND they're easy. Which means... making (and devouring) homemade peanut butter cups should definitely be high priority on your to-do list this weekend.

Enjoy! P.S. If you end up eating them all before Halloween next Tuesday, everyone will understand.

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