These delicious and healthy peanut butter cups are made with just 4 main ingredients. Simple, dairy free, vegan, gluten free, and perfect for a healthy, treat to satisfy your sweet tooth!

This post has been created in partnership with iHerb.

Let’s Talk Healthy Peanut Butter Cups!

Homemade peanut butter cups, how original….I know, I’m not the first person in the world to make my own homemade version of this all-time-favorite treat but I can tell you, there’s no chance you’ll find homemade healthy peanut butter cups just like mine anywhere!

That’s because they contain a special secret little ingredient that takes these healthy homemade peanut butter cups from totally delicious to totally delicious with a gut-friendly boost!

Let’s talk about Probiotics for a sec…

If I were to make a list of the top 5 supplements I truly believe that everyone should be taking, probiotics would definitely be on that list. Not only has taking probiotics hugely helped me with my own digestive issues that I struggled with for years, they also have been proven over and over again to boost overall health because not only do they impact gut health they actually improve immune function, heart health, and even some mental health disorders (read more here!).

Back in my nutritional consulting days I worked with hundreds of clients and increasing the intake of or starting to take probiotics regular was probably the most common recommendation I made. Our bodies thrive off of a healthy microbiome and one way to ensure that we have that (a healthy balance of bacteria in our bodies) is to take probiotics as a supplement and eat probiotic rich foods.

The best probiotic foods:

If you are taking a probiotic supplement like Nature’s Way that’s amazing, you can also eat probiotic foods to help maintain a healthy microbiome as well. The best include:

Yogurt (dairy or non dairy)
Kefir
Sauerkraut
Kombucha
Tempeh
Kimchi
Apple cider vinegar
Fermented foods in general

While chocolate peanut butter cups don’t make this list usually, when you add probiotics too them they do! That’s exactly what I did for this recipe.

The Nature’s Way probiotics from iHerb include a children’s probiotic that comes in powdered form called Primadophilous Children and I’ll be honest, it’s the best powered probiotic I’ve discovered yet. Not only is the quality great but the powder is so fine and completely flavourless so it blends into virtually anything including the peanut butter filling of these tasty homemade healthy peanut butter cups!

The powdered probiotic mixes into the delicious peanut butter filling so well in this recipe it’s completely undetectable yet gives each peanut butter cup around just under 1 billion CFU of probiotics! If you wanted to amp up your probiotic intake even more you could crumble bits of one peanut butter cup over a small bowl of coconut yogurt, a probiotic rich snack that tastes like dessert!

I’m a huge peanut butter cup fan and I’ve always loved making them as a homemade treat but now I’m so happy that I can make them with the extra benefits of added probiotics, and especially for Hemsley too!

How to make the best homemade healthy peanut butter cups…the 3-step trick!

I’m happy to say that making this particular recipe for the blog confirmed that I have finally figured out the best chocolate to peanut butter filling ratio for homemade peanut butter cups that actually have the same texture as the real thing. When I first started making these years ago I would end up with what looked like an Oreo cookie – chocolate on the top, chocolate on the bottom and a layer of peanut butter in the middle rather than a “cup” with peanut butter inside.

1. First pour melted dark chocolate into a muffin liner that’s in a muffin tin, then before adding the peanut butter filling, you take your finger or a small spoon and swirl the chocolate around so that it makes a thin layer of chocolate along the inner edge of the muffin liner about 1 cm deep.

2. Then you add in the peanut butter filling and press it down slightly so that you can see a thin layer of that chocolate surrounding the outer edge of the peanut butter filling.

3. Then when you pour the remaining chocolate on the top of the peanut butter filling, it will envelope it and voila! a perfectly portioned peanut butter cup!

See? The chocolate isn’t too thick and there’s a nice, good portion of the tasty peanut butter filling which by the way is made with just two ingredients; natural peanut butter and pure maple syrup and a perfect sprinkle of powered probiotics. So simple!

I also skipped the coconut oil which people often used and just melted 70% allergen-friendly dark chocolate chips to make the chocolate shell.

All you need is 3-ingredients! Well, technically 5 if you count the secret probiotic powder addition and the sprinkle of sea salt to top the peanut butter cups (those are optional but well worth including)!

If you can’t have peanut butter due to an allergy you can also use any other nut butter of choice (almond or cashew would be great!) or you can even use a seed butter like tahini or sunflower seed butter! Have you ever made your own homemade healthy peanut butter cups? I’d love to hear how you make them, let me know in the comments below!

Also don’t forget to pin the photo below the recipe to save it for later and head over to iHerb to get a discount on your order (applicable for new or existing customers)!

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