Gooey Melty Giant Peanut Butter Cups
Melty Gooey Giant Peanut Butter Cups
One of the saddest things that I discovered when I went back to Tucson, was that one of my favorite restaurants Bumsted’s had closed. This place made some amazing and creative foods. One such food was their ginormous peanut butter brownie cups. I was able to get in contact with someone at Bumsteds who was nice enough to share the recipe, and so today I wanna share that recipe with you guys too. This recipe is totally the bomb, warmed up the peanut butter, brownie, and chocolate levels all mix up to create a delicious treat.
The recipe is really three components, a brownie component, a peanut butter level, and a ganache topping. The recipe is actually pretty easy, but it requires some finesse when it comes to temperatures and timing, so let’s jump into it.
Detailed Instructions:
Making the Brownies
The first thing we are going to need to do is to make some brownies. Now apparently any brownie recipe would work here, so if you have a favorite go for it, but if you don’t have a favorite brownie recipe this one worked pretty well.
We need to start with fat in the form of 1/3 cup (90 mL) of melted butter and 1/4 cup (50 mL) of vegetable oil to that we are going to add 1 cup (~200 grams) of granulated sugar. Mix this up and add 2 eggs, along with a teaspoon of vanilla extract. To which we wanna add 2/3 cup of melted chocolate chips (115 grams). This can be done in a doubler boiler since melting chocolate directly over a stovetop is liable to burn the delicate chocolate. If you don’t know how to do that, no worries, be sure to check out the video. After mixing all this add 1 cup of flour (100 grams), 1/4 cup (25 grams) of cocoa powder, and lastly 3 grams of salt.
Now the next step is you are going to need a muffin tin. I bought a jumbo muffin tin just for this very purpose, but if you don’t have that, a smaller muffin tin will work just fine but you will obviously have smaller peanut butter cups, which is definitely no biggie, and that will mean that you will probably have to adjust the times a little, but I will go over how to go about doing that. We are going to need to heat up our oven up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 176 c.
Now we are going to want to grease up our muffin pan, normally I use the vegetable oil paper towel method to just wipe it on, but I had some spray so I got lazy and just blasted it. I also experimented with some parchment paper to see if it made a difference, but honestly, it didn’t really do anything.
Once the muffin pan is greased, pour the batter in and put it in the oven. Here is probably the trickest part of the recipe, we are going to need to cook these brownies, but not all the way. The recipe I was going off of, stated that the brownies should be cooked for 30 minutes, but I started checking the brownies every five minutes after the 15-minute mark. What we are looking for is when the brownie edges and center are relatively firm, but not entirely cooked. For me, 25 minutes worked well or five minutes short of the full bake, if you have smaller muffin tins, you may need to lower this time a little.
While the brownies are still warm, pulled them out of the oven. Using a ladle, or something else spherical press down on the brownies to create a divet. Don’t press too hard, we really just want to create a nice well. From here it’s peanut butter time, now I was told either crunchy or smooth would work here. I went smooth, and we really just need a few spoonfuls to fill each cup. It’s best to do this while they are still warm, as the peanut butter will get soft and level off in the divets. We want to only add enough peanut butter so that the leveled out peanut butter juuuust comes out under the top of the edge, so basically we just wanna make sure not to overfill these guys. Once each of the peanut butter cups is filled and has leveled off, I placed mine in the fridge for a little bit to firm up. I am not sure if this was entirely necessary, but I really wanted a solid platform to pour the top layer of ganache on.
Ganache Topping
So a few hours later, once our PB cups are cool, we can start up on the ganache. Now Ganache is kinda a loose term, but the kind that worked for me was a mix of chocolate and heavy cream. I made way too much, so It would probably be sufficient to reduce this recipe by a quarter. I used 200 grams of 1 and one fourth cup milk chocolate chips and 1/4th of that weight in heavy cream which corresponds to 50 mL or about ¼ cup of heavy cream. Using a double boiler setup, where a pot is filled with a few inches of water, and a glass or metal bowl is used to melt the chocolate, heat this up until it’s all melted, then added the heavy cream. Since my cream was cold, it sorta seized up at first, but as it warmed up it quickly came together. Once the Ganache is nice and mixed and smooth, we are ready to pour the tops. So pull the PB cups out of the fridge, and I simply just spooned the ganache over the top, ensuring not to put too much. Now we need to put the whole thing back in the fridge to set.
Finishing up
After a few hours, we are ready to roll, just pull the cups out. When you are ready to serve you could eat them cold, but the better way is to stick them into a 350 F oven for about 10 minutes, at which point they will become all melty melty. This is the best, serving these to your guests will blow their minds.
This is a serious sensory overload, and one PB cup is enough for anywhere from 1 to 4 people. It makes me seriously miss eating at Bumsted’’s let hope the awful construction on 4th avenue adds to the local restaurant kill count.
I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did, consider sharing it with a friend!
Condensed Recipe:
Ingredients:
1/3 cup [90 mL] of melted butter
1/4 cup [50 mL] of vegetable oil
1 cup [200 grams] granulated sugar
2 eggs
a teaspoon of vanilla extract
2/3 cup [115 grams] melted chocolate chips
1 cup [100 grams ] all-purpose flour
1/4 cup [25 grams] cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon [3 grams] salt
Ganache
1.25 cups [200 grams] chocolate chips
1/4 cup [50 mL] heavy cream
Instructions:
Mix up melted butter and vegetable oil with granulated sugar, add eggs and vanilla extract, then add melted chocolate chips.
Add flour, cocoa powder and salt. Mix and pour into greased muffin tins.
Bake at 350F (176 C) for 25 minutes or until firm, but not entirely baked (see video for better instructions).
Using a ladle, lightly push a divet into each brownie, forming a cup, put 2-3 spoons of peanut butter in or full just under the rim.
Place into the refridgerator for a few hours or until completely chilled.
Make Ganache by mixing chocolate chips and heavy cream in a doubler broiler, pour over chilled cups.
Place back into fridge and chill again until set.
Pull out and enjoy!
(optional) reheat the entire thing in a 350F oven for 10 minutes, or until melty
Enjoy!