It is funny how we make friends as adults.

As someone who didn’t make my friends as a kid, almost all of my relationships and friendships have happened as an adult. While I sometimes feel like I missed out on having those people around me that I’ve known since I was 3 years old, or those people that I went to every level of school with, I feel really happy and blessed that I’ve been able to build a group of people around me who I not only feel like I chose to have there, but have also chosen to have me be a part of their lives.

One of those people is my friend Liz. I met Liz about six years ago at my first apartment in Toronto. I moved to midtown Toronto after living in a more suburban part of the city with my parents. I had a fantastic apartment which I likely would have still been in today had I not wanted to live alone (ah, roommates, right)? Liz and I didn’t meet through friends or even at a party, we met at her work! I needed a new hair salon and a place down the street from my office and my apartment were taking clients. I walked in and was paired with Liz. A few haircuts later and we were talking all the time. We went from just seeing each other once every few weeks, to her coming over, hanging out, and on numerous occasions, bleaching and dying my hair on my bed using a grocery bag as a cap (glamorous, I know).

Anyways, fast forward a fair bit into the future and Liz and I are still great friends. Although we don’t see each other every week, when we do catch up, we laugh until we can’t breathe and it feels like we haven’t missed a beat.

This week she came over in the evening and we planned to bake. Knowing that she tries to eat Keto, I wanted something she could enjoy- so we settled on these peanut butter cups! They are dark chocolate, all-natural peanut butter, and we used coconut flour and coconut sugar so they’re gluten-free and nearly sugar-free. These don’t really require any prep time, just require a bit of time to free in between steps. You can whip these up with barely any notice and they’re a crowd-pleaser.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 Cups All Natural Peanut Butter, melted (plus more for drizzling)

1 1/4 Cup Coconut Flour

1/3 Cup Coconut Sugar (or Erythritol)

1 1/4 Tsp Madagascar Vanilla Extract

1/4 Tsp Kosher Salt

2 1/4 Cup Dark Chocolate, melted

1 Tbsp + 1/2 Tsp Coconut Oil

Instructions:

In a large bowl, combine the peanut butter, coconut flour, sugar, vanilla and salt. Mix well until everything is smooth.

Roll the peanut butter mixture into balls roughly 1 Tbsp in size. Flatten slightly and place onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Freeze for 30 minutes or until firm.

Once the mix is nearly frozen, melt the coconut oil and chocolate together in a microwave in 20 second bursts on high. Stir in between bursts in the microwave.

Remove the frozen peanut butter mix and using a fork, dip each disk into the melted chocolate until coated and place back onto the parchment paper. Put disks back into the freezer and let firm for another 30 minutes.

Melt some additional peanut butter. Remove the disks from the freezer and drizzle with the melted peanut butter. Salt with flaky sea salt and freeze again for 10 minutes.

Serve these cold to best enjoy them.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we did, and if you make them, please tag me on Instagram at @JackDHarding