Peanut Butter & Chocolate Overload FT(actual)W!

Let's cut to the chase on this one. To make a long story short, my friend JW had a 25th birthday party yesterday. Her Evite announced, "Here's the twist - it's IRON CHEF style. Your challenge is to bring a dessert that involves chocolate AND peanut butter." Creative, no?!

My visiting friend RBC took it upon herself to Google a few potential recipes so that we could team up for a PB & chocolate takeover. Short on time, we ultimately chose to make Crunchy Mega Peanut Butter Cups, a recipe found & adapted from this recipe from Two Fat Als.

There were 14 entries in total, each more delicious than the next - torte cakes, ganache brownies, Puppy Chow, popcorn, Buckeyes. All party-goers sampled the goodies, cast their ballots (a whopping 178 votes total!) & consumed a lot of liquids to wash down so much sticky PB & chocolate goodness. The end result, as decided upon by the voters, was that RBC's & my joint creation was, in fact, the most delicious of the bunch!

One anonymous voter wrote of our PB cups, "HOLY SHIT! Sophisticated - like a Joyce novel, not for everyone but those who put in the effort are swiftly rewarded."

Want to be like us? Well, we can't blame you. We also can't guarantee you'll win any prizes for your dessert, as we did (a bag of Reese's cups, plus "Milk" & "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist"!), but we can guarantee that it'll taste pretty gosh-darn good.

• 2 cups milk chocolate chips
• 1 cup peanut butter chips
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
• generous pinch salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Reese's Dessert Toppings
• 12 muffin cups
  
  Combine the chocolate & peanut butter chips. Melt half the concoction by microwaving for 30 seconds then stirring (& repeating) until chocolate has melted. Spoon a little of the chocolate/PB mixture into each muffin wrapper, spreading the chocolate up the sides of the wrapper (we used a cheap foam craft brush like these to make this a little easier). Freeze candy shells until set.
  
  In a small bowl, whisk together peanut butter, confectioners’ sugar, salt & vanilla. If it is not soft, you can microwave it a bit. Add a generous amount of the filling into each prepared candy cup, & chill again until set. Melt all remaining chocolate & peanut butter chips, & use it to cover peanut butter filling with chocolate. Top cups with crushed Reese's Dessert Topping. Chill a final time until set.

The end result should look something like this:

And your pride should look something like this: