So you may have noticed that I'm playing a little catch up. I tried to post during the holidays and it was just a little busy. I didn't post while we were gone on our trip, then we hit the ground running when we got back. Big meeting coming up, which means I've been working, working, working. I didn't take the little man to daycare since he's been busying himself pretty well, but I ended up working a good part of the evenings when Eli got home, over the weekend, and will have just a little more work to do Monday to finish preparing for Tuesday.
The biggest slow down has been the cold and the wind. Upstairs is cozy and even a little warm, but down stairs is freezing! It is too cold for me to work down there, which means trying to work down there with Isaac is a big no. Having to work at the kitchen table isn't ideal and makes Isaac want to help me. I also need to do some spray painting but it has been too windy to do that. I did the small pieces the other day and it wasn't bad but ended up having to put the paint on too heavy in order to avoid having to go out and do another coat. Hopefully it will stop tomorrow or I'll just have to hope I don't get myself too bad with the spray paint.
Anyways...on to the giant pb cup. I got inspired for Eli's stocking stuffer and set my sights high. He loves Reese's Peanut Butter Cups so I wanted to make him a giant one. I began looking for recipes for pb cups and happened upon one for a giant one! What luck!...or so I thought. The recipe left some to be desired. It listed ingredients, then used different amounts in the recipe. It came from a blog (not a bad thing) but the author incorporated her thoughts into the recipe too much, making it hard to follow. I'm all for hearing the thoughts but don't like it when they get too jumbled in the recipe.
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| This is the inspiration picture. I knew mine wouldn't look like that since I wanted to make it in a dish to be kept in the freezer while we were gone. |
Here is the link to the orginal recipe:
http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/giant_reeses_peanut_butter_cup
Now she says she used Reese's Peanut Butter. I couldn't find it anywhere...or at least not at the 2 places in town that I had to look. Not sure if they still make it or not. I'm not going to post the recipe here because there are some changes I would make but haven't been able to test them. She also says in the ingredients to get an 18 oz container of pb but in the recipe uses 4 tablespoons!! I was so mad when I saw that but then...I used 18+ ounces and I don't think it was enough (I used all the creamy we had and it wouldn't be right with crunchy)! I ended up making way too much peanut butter filling because I used about 3 1/2 cups of powdered sugar like it called for. I thought it was too much powdered sugar. Use less and maybe you won't need the 18+ ounces of peanut butter I needed. I also made my bottom chocolate too thick. I used two 11 oz bags of milk chocolate chips, I thought "oh, one on bottom and one on top!" No. Next time I'd used 1/2-3/4 of the bag on the bottom and the rest on the top. I think my pan was also smaller than one that she used. I found a quiche dish so the edges would be more like a Reese's but I wanted to be able to leave it in the pan and in the freezer while were were gone. I thought about lining the dish but ended up not doing it. It has worked great and didn't stick like I was worried about.
So you can see I had too much peanut butter filling. I just used a butter knife to cut and remove some.
I cut some out around the edges and off the top. I then put it aside, back in the bowl.
You can tell I didn't have quite enough chocolate to make the top smooth, but it covered so success!
I put it in the freezer to speed up the setting up process so that I could then hide it until Christmas. There are a few air bubbles, but I just tapped the dish on the counter and they came out. Now, with the excess peanut butter mixture I made mini ones. I didn't have anymore milk chocolate so I used semi-sweet chips. In her recipe she warns against using these and adding milk because it turned out runny and not set-up. Well, I didn't have much of a choice. I tried to melt some chips and shortening but they didn't melt down smooth enough so I added some milk chocolate. I balled the peanut butter up and (because I didn't have the time) I didn't do a bottom layer of chocolate.
I used a muffin tin and some left over cupcake liners. I made them a little big because I didn't want to make very many, so I filled just the one tin.
I poured the chocolate over the top so they were something between a peanut butter cup and a bon-bon.
These didn't set-up well. I put them in the freezer to speed the process. They were okay to sit out a little bit but after a few hours, they would get too warm and were a mess to eat. They weren't too hard straight out of the freezer so that is how I served them. Too much powdered sugar, but next time I'll try less and the same amount of peanut butter to see what I get.
Well, now I hope we're caught up a bit cause I'll be busy busy during my normal posting time this next week. But stay tuned, I have a new Pinterst fail coming up!
