No-Bake Maple Almond Cups with Dark Chocolate Ganache & A Hint of Coconut {Gluten Free}

*recipe created by Just Add cloth and sponsored by Nestle Toll House.

Sizzling outside and you don’t feel like heating up the house by turning on the oven? No problem, you can still make some fun treats for the family and guests. No-bake treats are a fun way to experiment. Without the chemistry involved with baking, you can be more creative with ingredients and use more substitutions. With no-bake desserts, it is all about the right balance of wet ingredients and dry ingredients. There is no need for baking soda or eggs, so you can get ready to break all the baking rules!

We decided to jazz up the week with our twist on the old standby, the chocolate peanut butter cup. These are popular among the holiday cookie and candy crowd, but we made it a little more unique and trendy with some Paleo ingredients that are big right now. Swap out the powdered sugar for real natural maple syrup and coconut flour, add almond butter instead of peanut butter, and you get a whole new flavor!

No-Bake Maple Almond Cups with Dark Chocolate Ganache & A Hint of Coconut

Makes about 60 when using the smallest mini cupcake liners.

1 cup crunchy salted almond butter
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1 cup coconut flour
20 ounces (2 regular 10 oz bags) dark chocolate NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE morsels
1/2 cup full fat coconut milk
Mini cupcake liners

Pour coconut milk and chocolate morsels into a heavy bottoms sauce pan and heat on low. In a bowl, combine almond butter, maple syrup, salt and coconut flour. You will need to mix by hand quickly since coconut flour wastes no time absorbing liquid. Make sure to pay attention to your chocolate and stir it often.

Line a metal sheet with mini cupcake liners. You can fit about 30 liners on a standard cookie sheet while keeping enough space between them to work efficiently. Using your hands, grab a small piece of the almond butter dough and roll it in your hands forming a ball slightly larger than a typical marble. place dough ball in the bottom of the liner and continue making dough balls for each liner. This recipe should make about 60 balls.

Once your chips and coconut milk are melted and mixed, it should be runny enough to drip/glop into the cupcake liners over the dough balls. Use a spoon to place enough chocolate sauce to just cover the almond ball.

When you are finished filling your cups, you can leave the tray out at room temperature or pop it in the fridge to set up your cups more quickly. Since we made a ganache for filling the cups, the chocolate will remain slightly soft and more truffle-like.

For those who are not in love with coconut, trust me when I say it really is a hint of coconut.

This no-bake treat and is quick and easy, plus gluten free. For different takes on it, any nut or seed butter can substitute in for the almond butter. You could also substitute honey for the maple syrup if you don’t like the slight maple flavor.

Emily Ducatte

August 3, 2015 at 6:08 pm

I would love to try making the buckeyes! I ate some that someone else had made just the other day and they tasted amazing! I had no idea they were a simple, no-bake recipe.