Vegan, Soy-Free Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups

Chocolate is packed full of anti-oxidants and is actually quite the little super food IF you don't have all the processed sugar, milk, and other ingredients that often throw this food into the junk food category. It's really quite a shame. Fortunately, there are plenty of healthy ways to enjoy delicious chocolate.

Lance loves chocolate and peanut butter, so I decided to make this with real peanut butter (ingredient = peanuts only). To make a raw version of this treat, use raw almond butter or another raw nut butter instead. You know you have good peanut butter when the oils separate. This means many of the preservatives and stabilizers haven't been added to the peanut butter and it's just gooey goodness.

This recipe calls for cacao products - not premade chocolate. Cacao is the unprocessed precursor to chocolate in its original state. Some people argue that cacao is not raw because it exceeds 115 degrees and ferments after harvest, but there are enough benefits from indulging from time to time that I still kept it in my diet when I was extremely high raw vegan.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
makes about 16 cups that are 1.5 inches in diameter and about 1/2 an inch high
3.5 oz cacao butter
1.5 oz cacao powder
3 oz agave
several 1/2 tsp of peanut butter
Tiny cupcake or foil cups to hold the chocolate

I used a small sauce pan and slowly melted the cacao butter over the lowest heat possible. If you are trying to make this as raw as possible, you can put the cacao butter in a food dehydrator over several hours to slowly melt the "butter" or you can use a thermometer. I frankly don't have that much patience.

Once the cacao butter is melted, add the agave and cacao powder and stir very well. Use a teaspoon to spoon chocolate into the bottom of the foil cups. You want it to be about 1/3 of an inch or more thick on the bottom.

Stir between chocolate cups so the agave doesn't settle on the bottom. Then add a small amount of nut butter into each cup. Then spoon enough chocolate to cover the nut butter.

Let chill to set in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.