cooking with the kids: healthy peanut butter cups df, gf, sf, keto, paleo, vegan

HEALTHY PEANUT BUTTER CUPS

dairy free, gluten free, soy free, sugar free, egg free, keto, paleo, vegan

Everyone that I’ve talked to that loves to cook or bake usually shares with me a positive experience or memory they had in the kitchen with a loved one growing up and this is almost always what they attribute their love of cooking to. Every Chef’s Table episode or cooking show I’ve seen reiterates that same idea and each chef usually starts sharing about their upbringing with stories like: “I used to hide under the table while my grandma made pasta, or I grew up cooking in the kitchen with my dad or I used to help grow the food and cook the food etc”. I love everything about cooking: building flavors and letting my mind wander while my hands are busy chopping, stirring and kneading. It’s like a form of therapy for me and it’s important to me to let my kids be part of that experience and hopefully share that same love someday. I would love for them to grow up understanding the importance of fresh organic ingredients and know how to find and make wholesome recipe’s for some of the foods they love. Today we made healthy peanut butter cups. They are packed with healthy fats from coconut oil (fuel for your brain) and filled with protein from the peanut butter (we make sure to read the ingredients list when we buy peanut butter to make sure there isn’t any sugar added. Trader Joes or Costco have some great options!). They literally taste better than a Reese’s but without all the added white sugar etc!

Cooking with kids is sometime’s double the time and triple the mess… but the memories and overall experiences we get to share together are so worth it!

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED:

Total Time: 10m

Yield: 10-15 peanut butter cups

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup peanut butter (make sure no sugar is added), or an allergy-friendly sub

• optional 1/8 tsp salt

• 2 tbsp coconut oil

• 1/4 cup cocao powder

• 1/4 cup maple syrup or agave (these are low on the glycemic index so don’t spike your blood sugar like sugar does!) If you are keto, replace with monk fruit sweetener or stevia

  Materials

• muffin tin

• cupcake/muffin liners

  HERE’S HOW YOU MAKE IT:

  Melt 2 tbsp coconut oil in a saucepan over low heat and whisk in 1/4 cup cacao powder and 1/4 cup pure maple syrup or agave to form a thin sauce. Spoon or pour about 1 tsp chocolate sauce on the bottom of the cupcake liners for the first layer. Freeze. Add about a tsp of the peanut butter (or one of the alternative fillings listed earlier in this post) to each layer. Cover with another tsp chocolate. Freeze to set. You may have to make a little more sauce at a time to fill all the cupcake liners but I recommend this rather than making a big batch because the chocolate sauce can sieze up and get chunky if mixed over heat too long! Once they’re frozen and set, unpeel from the cupcake liners and store in a parchment lined Tupperware in the freezer!

let me know if you have any questions! If you try them tag me, I want to see!

and I love these wipeable bonded leather aprons that Gathre just came out with! They’re genius!