My daughter is a 100% hardcore, chocolate addict. It’s a hard truth for me. After all, I’m the reason she goes insane if anybody even mentions the word ‘chocolate‘. For that matter she does the same thing with the words ‘cookie‘, ‘cake‘, or ‘gummi‘. Actually, you can thank Germany for that last one. For some reason random cashiers at stores feel the need to hand out little “fun-size” pouches of gummi bears…
I’ve been trying to find new, healthier alternatives to these nutrient poor foods that she loves. I’ve come up with a ton, but the difficulty lies in her willingly and happily eating them. I’ve been focusing a lot lately on trying to come up with appealing alternatives to plain nut butters, which she won’t eat. I tried a honey-almond butter that I thought was delicious but she wouldn’t have anything to do with it. I also tried plain almond butter, as well as almond butter sandwiches with chocolate chips sprinkled in. Aside from her picking out the chocolate chips that last one didn’t work at all. She won’t eat peanut butter sandwiches without jelly or nutella. Basically if its not sweet, she isn’t having it. Ugh. What have I created!?
When I stumbled upon this recipe on Pinterest I finally felt a speck of hope. Surely my daughter would eat chocolate-flavored peanut butter? I mean, it looks like melted chocolate so it definitely has the visual appeal going for it. And she doesn’t mind peanut butter as long as it is paired with something sweet… I decided to give it a whirl.
WINNER! She loooooooves it. Absolutely loves it.
And incredibly easy to make, using only THREE ingredients!
Throw a whole 16 ounce container of honey-roasted peanuts into your super-powered blender or food processer. Both work fine. I used my Vitamix here, but I actually prefer my food processor for nut butters.
Process the peanuts, taking them from crushed, to finely crushed, to a paste, to a thicker paste, to a “ball”, to a runnier mixture. As you can see from this picture, even though the peanuts have become runny, they are not quite completely broken down. At this point you would let your blade run for another good minute or two to get the mixture super smooooth.
Once you are happy with the creamy quality of your peanuts, go ahead and add in your chocolate chips and vanilla. You can add in up to 2 cups chocolate chips, but I thought 1 cup was just fine, especially since I am trying to make this a bit healthier.
Okay- now PROCESS baby!
It won’t take very long for the chocolate chips to melt and become incorporated at this point. They melt right into the peanut butter. Run the blade for another minute or two to get everything happily mixed.
DONE! Now you can’t pour it right into a nice little glass jar or any other airtight container you might have. Wasn’t that easy??
You can store this in the fridge to help it keep longer if you’d like, but the makes it quite firm because the chocolate chips solidify. It easily comes back up to room temperature sitting out on the counter about 15 minutes or so, but I just store it in a cupboard to make things easier. If you do that though, it won’t keep as long- maybe about 3 weeks. That’s never been a problem for me though since it’s always gone by then : )
My only problem with this chocolate-peanut butter is that it isn’t truly a healthier alternative. While it is better than my daughter eating straight chocolate, I would really like to cut out the artificial, processed pieces of this recipe. I’m working on developing a similar recipe using natural peanuts, cocoa/carob powder, as well as a natural sweetener such as honey, maple syrup, or agave. That way it will be vegan and less processed. Personally, I’m not a big fan of honey roasted peanuts because of all the additives on the ingredients label, but they work great for this purpose, providing sweetness and flavor without adding any more ingredients to the recipe.
- 16 ounces honey-roasted peanuts
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
- Place the peanuts in the bowl of a food processor and process until completely broken down to a smooth creamy peanut butter, scraping the sides of the food processor bowl as needed. This will take about 5 to 8 minutes, depending on how many times you stop to scrape down the bowl. (Peanuts will go from crushed, to a paste, to a “ball”, and from there start to break down and become runny. Continue to process at least 1 minute longer at this point.)
- Add the vanilla extract and chocolate chips directly to the bowl of the food processer. Process until chocolate is melted and mixture is completely incorporated, about 2 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides as needed.
- Store in an air tight container either at room temperature for a softer spread that will not keep as long (about 3 weeks) or in the refrigerator, which will make the spread firmer (will soften at room temperature after about 15 minutes) but will keep longer (multiple months).
Adapted from Averie Cooks
Tagged as:
chocolate,
healthy,
nuts,
peanut butter