Reeces Peanut Butter Fudge

I've seen this recipe floating around the internet as of late, and so I decided I had to try it for myself. My teenage son is having a group of friends over tonight for games, food, and fun, so it was the perfect opportunity/excuse to make this. The recipe itself is extremely simple, but I will share some tips to go along with making/serving it that may come in helpful if it's your first time trying this.

Ingredients:

Reeces Peanut Butter Cups (full size PB cups; I purchased 2 6-pack packages, so 24 cups total)
3 c. Chocolate Chips
1 14-oz can Sweetened Condensed Milk

I used a glass 8"x11" pan for making this recipe. If you want to use an 8x8" or 9x9" pan, you may need to use fewer peanut butter cups. Likewise, if you use a 9x13" pan, you'll probably need to purchase more and wind up with a thinner fudge.

The first thing to do is to line whatever pan you are using with tin foil and then give it a quick blast with non-stick cooking spray to prevent the foil from becoming one with your fudge. That would be really disappointing!

Next, simply line up a layer of peanut butter cups to form your bottom layer of the fudge.

After you have this done, grab a small saucepan and go ahead and combine the chocolate chips and sweetened condensed milk. You'll want to melt these together, stirring frequently, until you have a nice, smooth texture. Once it's melted, the chocolate will quickly thicken up into a fudge-like consistency.

Taking a rubber spatula, spoon out the chocolate on top of the PB cups. You'll need to use the spatula to spread the chocolate evenly around the pan and once it's spread across the entire area, gently press down so that the fudge will fill the areas between the PB cups.

With any remaining PB cups you have, go ahead and chop them up into pieces to top the fudge. I found using a nice, sharp non-serrated knife worked wonderfully for chopping up the pieces as well as for cutting the final bars!

Refrigerate the fudge for a few hours until it's fairly solid. Once you feel you've waited long enough and can't handle it for another minute, go ahead and get the fudge out of the fridge. Lift the whole block of fudge out of the pan with the tin foil. I quickly peeled the foil off the bottom of the fudge and then placed it on a large cutting board. Using a sharp knife, I was able to easily cut the fudge into serving-size pieces.

This is an extremely (!!!) sweet fudge, so I would highly recommend that you slice the pieces smaller than you might think you should. Refrigerate the slices until you are ready to serve them up, then enjoy!