Wondering what to do with peanut butter cups? This guide covers how to pick them, cook them, store them, and swap them, plus 12 recipes to put them to work.

What are peanut butter cups?

Peanut butter cups are bite-sized candies built from a disc of sweet peanut butter filling sealed inside a shell of milk or dark chocolate. The classic is the ridged Reese's cup, and that's the version most American recipes assume.

They come in two sizes that matter for baking. The full-size cup runs about the width of a half dollar; the bagged miniatures are roughly the size of a thumbnail.

Minis tuck whole into cookie dough or muffin tins. Full cups get chopped, and the filling is sweeter and saltier than spreadable peanut butter, so a single cup carries both flavors at once.

Baking With Peanut Butter Cups

Chop full-size cups into quarters or sixths and fold them into the dough at the very end, after the flour is in. Folding early shreds them and smears chocolate through the batter, which dulls the contrast you wanted.

The single best trick is to freeze the cups for 20 to 30 minutes before chopping. Cold candy cuts into clean chunks instead of squashing and gumming up your knife, and frozen pieces hold their shape longer in a hot oven before the filling goes molten.

Minis are the no-chop option. Press one whole into the center of each cookie dough ball, or sink one into the bottom of a lined muffin cup before adding brownie batter, the way Brownie Peanut Butter Bites does it.

No-bake desserts keep the cups intact. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Cheesecake and the high-scoring Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake both press chopped cups into the filling and crown the top with whole or halved ones, so they read as candy, not as flavoring.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Peanut butter cups belong with their own family of flavors: chocolate in every form, more peanut butter, banana, pretzels, and a little flaky salt to push back against the sweetness. A pinch of salt on a finished bar or cheesecake makes the whole thing taste less one-note.

They also go well with coffee and espresso. Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cup Cookies and similar doughs lean rich and dark around them for that reason.

The most common mistake is treating the cup like a chocolate chip and baking it long and hot. The shell scorches and the filling leaks into a greasy puddle well before a chip would.

Add chopped cups to anything baking above 375°F (190°C) only in the last stretch, or press them into the top after the timer goes off.

The second mistake is using too many. A cup is far sweeter than chocolate alone, so an overloaded dough turns cloying and bakes up greasy from all the added cocoa butter and oil.

Substitutes

No swap nails the chocolate-and-peanut-butter-in-one effect, but you can get close. The simplest is chopped chocolate plus a swirl of peanut butter folded in separately, which gives you the two flavors even if the texture isn't a neat cup.

Chocolate chips with a spoonful of peanut butter chips approximate the look and survive oven heat better, though they taste sweeter and less peanutty. For the candy itself, any peanut butter cup brand works in place of Reese's; store brands and dark-chocolate versions chop and bake the same way.

In a pinch, a chopped peanut butter filled chocolate bar or even a chopped Snickers stands in, though Snickers brings caramel and peanuts that change the flavor.

Buying and Storing

You'll find peanut butter cups in the candy aisle year round. They come as individually wrapped full cups, bagged minis, plus seasonal shapes like eggs and chocolate trees at the holidays.

For baking, the bagged minis and the "unwrapped baking" cups are the most economical, since you skip unwrapping dozens of singles. Buy minis when a recipe wants whole pieces and full cups when it wants chopped chunks, since the ridged full cup gives bigger, more dramatic pieces.

Store them cool and dry, away from the oven and out of direct sun, and they keep for months. Chocolate that warms and resets develops a pale, chalky bloom on the surface.

That bloom is harmless and bakes away, but it looks off on candy meant to sit on top of a dessert. The freezer helps here too: cups keep up to a year frozen in a sealed bag, and you can chop them straight from the freezer with no thawing.

Quick facts

In Chinese

花生酱杯

British (UK) term

Peanut butter cups

en français

beurre d'arachide tasses

en español

tazas de mantequilla de maní

Recipes using peanut butter cups

There are 12 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 12 recipes