You may be able to relate to what I’m talking about.
I was recently having a seemingly uncontrollable hankering for something sweet to nibble on. It wasn’t like I was particularly hungry, I mean, I certainly had plenty of actual food-food that I could have stuffed into my face…I just wanted something a little bad, ya know? Maybe a little creamy? Maybe a little chocolatey? oooooh yeah, and a little salty? Yes! THAT! Whatever that might be, that’s what I wanted.
And of course I wanted it right. that. minute.
So.
After tearing through the pantry (possibly unearthing an old stash of Halloween candy from 2014?) and pilfering apart the very lowest bowels of my freezer (to discover a lone forgotten Magnum bar maybe? ha, fat chance…. frozen banana? anyTHIng? anybody?), I finally came across an old, more than half used bag of chocolate chips (yes, I froze them to hide them, which is sorta funny in light of this story) and said to myself:
Eureka, baby.
Because for the love of all things chocolate-coated, I knew that I could take this little rag-tag-bag o’ lowly chips and spin them into a luscious little ittie-bittie-bite of a goodie.
And THAT – was all I needed to know.
Suddenly armed with these chocolate chips (of course I had some peanut butter, I mean, come on now) I was thinking that I could potentially pull together a cutie-pie riff of a Reece’s peanut butter cup (see bakerita.com’s awesome version). How clever am I, right?
Well, no, not sah much, actually…….since in this kitchen there was not even a whiff of a mini muffin pan liner in sight. Hard to pour melted chocolate into a mold that I didn’t even have ownership of.
Not to be deterred, I made some minor adjustments. You can too.
First find a sheet pan that will fit in your freezer. This is very important because once you have all of your chocolate PB patties set up onto it you DO NOT want to discover that the dang thing won’t fit in the deep freeze! That would be a shame.
Melt your chocolate chips in a glass bowl or measuring cup. I had about half a cup, and that is all you need! Pop ’em in the microwave for about 45 seconds. Pull this out and give them a few seconds for the residual heat to do its thang. Now stir. They should melt down into a beautiful brown pool for you. If you need a little more heat, just zap them for another 5 seconds or so. That should do the trick.
Line your pan with some aluminum foil, and with the tip of a teaspoon, thinly smear out circles of the melted chocolate, like you were drawing coins. This does NOT have to be perfect and you don’t have to worry about a drip here or there. Use about a quarter of a teaspoon of chocolate to smudge out your flat circle. My chocolate moons were a little bigger than a quarter…….this is very rough and you can make them as big or as small as you’d like. Make sure to leave yourself half of the chocolate remaining for the last step.
Next you will plop down a bit of peanut butter right in the center of your chocolate disk. I like the fresh ground peanut butter for this, it’s just stiffer and a little easier to work with but believe me, any sort of nut butter will do. (cough cough) Clearly NOT my first emergency chocolate hankering rodeo. 
Now dab a bit more of the leftover chocolate to top each of your disks, using your finger to swirl it, coating the peanut butter and meeting up with the bottom layer…..well, as best you can. Don’t even try to use a spoon or offset spatula or anything else like that to make this happen. PUL-leaz! You gotta use your finger to push the chocolate off the spoon anyway, you may as well go all in. 😜
And look at how pretty these are! How long did that take, two minutes or what?
Now give these guys a liberal sprinkle of some kosher salt (or some fleur de sel, if you are fancy like that – in which case, invite me over, would you?), and into the freezer they go to harden up. If you can stand it, let them chill out at least a half hour, the longer the better.
Because once frozen, they will pop off of that foil almost as fast as you can pop ’em in your mouth. Salty, creamy, chocolate peanutty decadence.
I love these things! You can use milk chocolate, dark chocolate, peanut butter, almond butter, whatever you like. Make as many as you like! I would normally advise you to store them in a covered container in the freezer but I don’t suspect you will have any leftover to stow away.
I know I didn’t. It was after all……an emergency.
NO RECIPE necessary: You just saw it. Chocolate chips, nut butter, salt, freezer. Genius.
