Homemade Peanut Butter Cups (Allergy-Friendly!)

Kellie is a tree-hugging mom to three who's learning to cook from scratch. She blogs regularly at Greenhab: The Browns Go Green and the Green Phone Booth.

I never stopped to think about how peanut butter is made, or what's in it, until last week when we realized that our 4 year old might have some food allergies. Luckily he's not allergic to nuts, but we have taken him off milk and we're thinking about gluten as well. It's gotten me reading the labels on absolutely EVERYthing and thinking about GFCF treats I can make for him.

This week I decided to try my hand and making peanut butter since it seems to be a staple in our house. I can safely say that I will never buy peanut butter from a store again! It was SO quick and easy.


I bought about a pound of dry roasted peanuts from the bulk bin at the grocery store, although I only used about 1.5 cups in this first batch. All I did was throw the peanuts into the food processor, drizzle a tiny bit (maybe a tablespoon) of peanut oil on top and blend for a few minutes until it was creamy. You can adjust the amount of oil depending on how thick or thin you like your peanut butter.

While I was feeling all domestic, I decided to make some peanut butter cups too.

The pan I used is like a mini muffin pan, but the cups are not as deep. I don't know what it's really for (so much for pretending to be domestic!) but it was perfect for this project.

I simply melted some gluten and casein free chocolate chips (you could use regular of course) and put a dab in the bottom of these mini muffin cups. I put it in the freezer for a few minutes to let the chocolate harden a bit so that the peanut butter would sit nicely on top when I added it. I topped it off with more chocolate and threw it back in the freezer for a while.

Most of them popped right out like muffins would, but I did have to extract a few with a knife. The only thing I'd do differently next time would be to keep the peanut butter to the middle, so that the chocolate drips down the sides and completely encases the peanut butter.

So there you have a gluten free, casein free treat...and we have a good amount of peanut butter left over for the peanut butter and jelly granola bars I'm planning to try over the weekend.