Name: Homemade Chocolate Peanut Butter
Total time: 1 h 15 min
Ingredients: 1½ cups dry-roasted peanuts; ⅔ cup (4 ounces) milk chocolate chips; ½ teaspoon table salt

Why This Recipe Works

Making your own peanut butter is empowering; you can customize the ingredients and the final texture. It's also fun, less expensive than buying prepared peanut butter, and easy—all it takes is a food processor, some dry-roasted peanuts, and salt. For a dessert-worthy spread, we found that substituting ⅔ cup of milk chocolate chips for ½ cup of the peanuts gave us a decadent chocolate peanut butter variation that took only 4 minutes in the food processor. Since grinding the mixture generated a fair amount of heat (enough to melt the chocolate and emulsify the mixture perfectly), there was no need to melt the chocolate before processing. But 1 hour of cooling was needed to ensure the right consistency of the final product. If the peanut butter was still too loose after cooling, we thickened it by stirring in water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until we reached our desired consistency.

Before You Begin

To control the salt level, we developed this recipe with unsalted peanuts. If you can find only salted dry-roasted peanuts, omit the salt and season to taste before serving.

Instructions

Process peanuts, chocolate chips, and salt in food processor until smooth, about 4 minutes (mixture will initially form clumps but will eventually thin out), scraping down sides and bottom of bowl as needed.

Transfer to 1-cup jar and let cool for 1 hour. If peanut butter is thinner than desired after cooling, thicken by stirring in water, 1 teaspoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached. Serve. (Peanut butter can be stored at room temperature for up to 2 months. Stir to incorporate any oil that has separated before serving.)