Vegan Peanut Butter Cups

Yes, you can indulge! I love the food I eat and with every meal, vegan food can taste amazing, you just have to be open to trying new things! Some things do taste bad but there are also non-vegan foods that taste bad as well. Just because it’s deemed healthy doesn’t mean it can’t taste good… so not true. Even when I chose to eat healthy, I would sometimes feel like I was restricting myself because I had this idea drilled into my head by society that healthy meant food automatically didn’t taste good. Now I eat healthier and I have found a full appreciation for the food I eat and each day I find new combinations of food that taste beautiful. An example of vegan food that tastes amazing is this recipe. It was inspired by a good bunch of friends I know from my school. As I got into a conversation about veganism with them, reese’s peanut butter cups came up and I had an aha’ moment. I knew exactly how to make reese’s peanut butter cups raw vegan style and I knew that they tasted amazing. I explained a bit on the difference between healthy peanut butter cups versus the processed ones you get in the package. I wanted to go further into what that meant but, I’ll explain it here.

In packaged or processed foods, shelf life is always on the mind of companies. Packaged foods like candy bars need to be able to last as long as possible on the shelf of a store to essentially save money. Things like chemicals and preservatives are added in to make processed foods last longer. These chemicals and preservatives are not good for our bodies and in fact are not meant to be in our bodies. When chemicals like hydrogenated oils are in our bodies, there is no use so they are stored in fat cells as toxins. These incomplete structured fat molecules are not meant to be in our bodies and probably have links to cancer and health issues. I don’t want to scare anyone but just being more aware of the ingredients in our food can make for better choices and all around health! That’s why making your own un-processed candies can actually be a good thing. In fact, it’s much better than buying it because you know exactly what you are putting inside! The difference between the Reese’s peanut butter cups you buy from the store and the ones you can make at home is that there are not only no preservatives and chemicals but there are no refined sugars and added overt fats. I’ll break it down into three parts here:

SUGARS:

 In these Reese’s peanut butter cups, you won’t be adding refined sugars like white, brown, and powdered sugar. Not every type of sugar is made equal and this is a common misconception. A lot of people think sugar is just sugar but that is very wrong. The reason why refined sugars are worse for our bodies is that there is no nutritional value and the form it is in will spike your blood sugar levels right away. If you get sugar from fruits with dietary fiber, you will be getting nutrients from the fruits and it will break down slower because of the fiber. Therefore a calorie from white sugar has no other nutrients and will raise blood sugar levels where as a fruit will give you nutrients and break down slowly.

            This recipe will use date paste instead of white sugar that is in many candy bars. Dates are very high in sugar and honestly taste a lot like caramel. They are so sweet that I even have a hard time eating it by itself. When blended with water, it is almost like a syrup and tastes like caramel syrup. Medjool Dates are the best to use because they are very squishy and easy to blend. This date paste will be used to sweeten both the chocolate and peanut butter portions in these peanut butter cups.

The sugar in these will break down slower and won’t spike your energy levels plus, you’ll be getting a lot more nutrients from the dates.

NO ADDED OILS

In candy bars, there are always added oils like hydrogenated palm oils or hydrogenated soybean oil. The problem with these as I stated earlier is that there is nothing the body can do with them. They are fats that are not complete molecules therefore i’s just stored in your body as a toxin and when you keep consuming these toxins, they build up and could be detrimental to your overall health. In this recipe, to create the chocolate part you need an oil. The oil used is coconut oil as it is a saturated fat. This means that at certain temperatures, it can be a solid and at others it is not. 

Vegan Peanut Butter Cups

Ingredients:

Chocolate:

-2 tablespoons unprocessed Coconut Oil 

-3 tablespoons Cacao Powder

-2 1/2 tablespoons date paste (optional, there are alternatives) 

       -You could also use 2-3 Tablespoons of Brown Rice Syrup or Coconut Sugar (based on your preference)

Peanut butter Filling: 

-2 1/2 tablespoons of peanut butter 

-1 1/2 tablespoons date paste or brown rice syrup or coconut sugar 

Instructions:

1. In a small mixing bowl, mix all the chocolate ingredients together until it's the consistency of melted chocolate. 

2. Prepare about 6 cupcake holders and spoon 1-2 tablespoons of the chocolate mixture into each, or until it covers the bottom of the holder.

3. Place all the 6 holders onto a pan and place into the freezer. The coconut oil will harden up! 

4. While the chocolate is in the freezer, it's time to prepare the peanut butter filling. 

For the Peanut butter Filling: 

1. Add the ingredients for the peanut butter filling into a small mixing bowl and mix vigorously until almost 'whipped' up. 

Assembling everything: 

When the chocolate has hardened, add half a tablespoon of the peanut butter mixture to each of the cupcake holders. 

After this is done, pour the remaining chocolate mixture onto the first and second layers of the peanut butter cups. When this is done, place into the freezer again to set. When it has hardened, it's all ready to share and eat! 

Keep in mind that although this is a healthier version from the packaged peanut butter cups, it is still a desert and should be eaten in moderation. Also keep in mind that this is not a low calorie type of food because there are a lot of oils from the peanut butter and coconut oil. :)

 PS: I know these pictures may not look as appetizing as expected but they were rich, decadent, touchingly sweet, and creamy. This was my first time making this and I was just experimenting with ratios. I used date paste in the peanut butter so it is a little discolored but that's nothing to worry about, it still tastes great! I hope you try this recipe out to share with people, it sure is an amazing desert!