Brenda's ButterCups

The recipe was actually inspired by an experiment of Mamakatts and also by Lynne's chocolate.  I played around a lot with both of these recipes to concoct a wonderful low-carb treat. And since unsweetened chocolate is unavailable in New Zealand, the recipe uses just unsweetened cocoa powder.

First arrange 34 cupcake papers on a large sponge roll pan.

Base:

10 oz butter - nuke on 'defrost' to soften (not melt) it
10 oz peanut butter - add to soft butter
1½ tsp. each vanilla and liquid AS (or similar = to 6 Tbsp. sugar)
Protein Powder to mix - around 1 1/4 cups
1 small coffee grinder's worth of well-ground flax seeds (say 4 Tbsp.)

Mix this all up to a soft dough.  Put a teaspoonful into each paper cup, and put them in the fridge while you make the chocolate.

Chocolate:

4 oz Butter
4 oz vegetable shortening (Crisco?) (Hardened coconut oil?)
4 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. Vanilla essence
4 tsp. liquid A.S. (equiv. 16 Tbsp. sugar)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup unsweetened flaked/desiccated coconut (optional)

Soften the butter a little by microwaving on low power a minute or two, then add the vegetable shortening and repeat.  Don't melt it; just soften it.  Stir it until all the lumps are gone, adding the cocoa powder, the vanilla, and the liquid AS.

Continue stirring (a whisk is good) as you slowly trickle the heavy cream.

By the time you finish adding the cream it should be starting to thicken a bit.  You can add 1 cup of coconut at this stage if you like.  (optional)

Take out your cups from the fridge, and spoon or pour a generous blob of "icing" on top of each one.  Keep on going until it is all used up.  Will be nice and thick :-)  You can add a sprinkle of chopped nuts ... it's nice to have help with this so you can get the job finished before the chocolate starts to set.

For best results use butter and coconut fat that have been left out of the fridge and are really soft so that they don't need microwaving. I think not getting the ingreds too hot or melted is the secret to successful chocolate making.

Keep these in the fridge.  Each Buttercup has:

Cals:164        Protein:4.7     Carb:1.4        Fat:15.6        Fibre:0.9

That is using calorie free sweetener and my particular brand of protein powder, which has 2.5 grams carbohydrate per 100 grams powder (which is about the amount to use).