Vegan Spider Web Peanut Butter Cups

Peanut butter cups are my all time favorite Halloween candy.  Or just favorite candy growing up in general.  Whenever we would get home with our stash of Halloween candy, we would dump it out on the floor and divide it into piles of what we wanted to keep and what we wanted to trade. I would pretty much always trade my non-chocolate candy.  Peanut butter cups of course were always in the keep pile.  I don't think any of my friends ever traded those!  There is just something so crave worthy about the sweet chocolate and salty peanut butter combo that makes me happy.  So now of course as an adult I still enjoy peanut butter cups.  Yes, I know you can buy them at the store in vegan varieties, but I prefer to make my own, because then I can choose the chocolate and peanut butter that go into them.  Also, they are super simple to make if you have molds. I actually just use silicone muffin liners and they work perfect!

Now, for Halloween I I like to make them even more festive and make Vegan Spider Web Peanut Butter Cups.  I like spiders after all, they are pretty cool creatures. But no, I don't mean decorating with real spider webs, that wouldn't be vegan, instead I made a pretty spider web design on top of my peanut butter cups.  Honestly I got the idea from Martha Stewart because I saw her decorate cupcakes like this and I thought it would be perfect on peanut butter cups!

For the cups I like to use a good quality vegan dark chocolate, usually Lily's Vegan Chocolate Chips which happen to also be sugar free.   I just melt it in a double boiler and it's ready to go!  I make my own peanut butter, so I use that for the filling.  But If I were buying it I would get one with only peanuts and sea salt for the ingredients. I like the centers of my peanut butter cups to be salty, not sweet to contrast the sweet chocolate. Lastly, for the spider web topping, I make a quick vegan "white chocolate".  It is in parenthesis because I don't make it with cacao butter since it would be a bit too runny to pipe.  It works out perfectly though!  These are so good!  If you are a big PB cup fan like me, give these Vegan Spider Web Peanut Butter Cups a try for Halloween!

Vegan Spider Web Peanut Butter Cups
Makes 6 large cups

Chocolate:

• 1 1/2 cups vegan dark chocolate chips, or vegan dark chocolate chopped

Spider Web:

• 1 Tbsp raw cashew butter at room temperature
• 2 Tbsp coconut butter warmed to liquid
• 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 tsp maple syrup warmed to liquid
• pinch sea salt

Filling:

• 1/4 cup organic peanut butter* refrigerated

Instructions:

1. Melt the dark chocolate in the top of a double boiler until smooth.
2. Spoon a little chocolate into the bottoms of 6 peanut butter cup molds set on a plate or tray, filling them about 1/4-1/3 full.  Place in the freezer until hard, about 10 minutes.
3. To make the spider web, combine coconut butter, cashew butter, vanilla, maple syrup,  and sea salt in a bowl, and whisk until smooth. Set aside for a minute.
4. Spoon a heaping 1 tsp of the peanut butter over the hardened dark chocolate layer, then pour the remaining dark chocolate over it in the cups until the peanut butter is covered, and tap the tray on the counter to level it.
5. Take the white chocolate and put it in a ziplock bag, and cut off the corner to create a small hole.  Pipe the white chocolate in a spiral from the center of the chocolate until you get to the outside snail shell style (see photo at the bottom), then take a toothpick and drag it from the center of the chocolate to the outside about 8 times in a circle to create the web.  Repeat with the remaining chocolates.
6. Place them in the freezer until set, about 20 minutes.
7. Enjoy! Store any extra in the refrigerator.

*If your PB is too runny for some reason, whisk a little coconut butter into it to thicken it.