After dinner with your sweetheart, you may want to go home for dessert. This recipe for chocolate cups, compliments of my grandmother, is sure to please the palette. Better yet, it’s economical: It only requires two ingredients — chocolate and butter. Plus, you can fill it with whatever your heart desires.
Ingredients
6 squares of Baker’s semisweet baking chocolate
2 tablespoons butter
10 large paper baking cups
To avoid burning the chocolate, you want to melt it using a double-boiler system. If you don’t have a double-boiler pan, you can improvise. Find a large pot and slightly smaller pot. Boil water in the smaller pot and put the larger one over the top. Add the chocolate and butter.
Once melted, remove immediately from heat and stir rapidly until well blended. The mixture should be thick.
Use a teaspoon to drop chocolate into the bottom of a baking cup and spread it up the sides. Cover the entire surface of the cup with a thin layer of chocolate. Repeat with all 10 cups. Place cups in muffin tin and chill until firm.
About 10 minutes before serving, add a filling of your choice to the cups.
Suggestions
Layer peanut butter or whipped cream and crushed Oreos
Ice cream or sorbet
Fruit preserves
Fresh fruit
Chocolate mousse
Pudding
Tip: If you want to get really cutesy, you can garnish the filled cups with hearts. Take a few strawberries and slice off the sides. Take two slices at an angle to create the heart shape and stick it into the filling deep enough to hold it in place.
