Bittersweet Chocolate Pepita Butter Bites

Intro

*This post was created in partnership with Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker.  In the below recipe Scharffen Berger’s bittersweet chocolate, with a floral brightness and a deep roasty flavor, pairs beautifully with toasted pepitas sweetened with honey to create festive and seasonal chocolate pepita butter bites. If you’re partial to a sweeter, creamier chocolate that’s fine too – check out all of the chocolate offerings on Scharffen Berger’s website.

Last year was our first year trick-or-treating with the kids the way I remember it from my childhood. The sort where the parents stay on the sidewalk bundled up with something warm to drink, chatting with the other parents while the witches, Harry Potter’s, princesses, and dragons go off to collect their loot.

As rain pelted our faces we slowly wandered down the winding streets knowing which house to knock on by the amount of Halloween flair that littered their windows and lawn. The kids, timid at first then quickly understanding the routine, would make their plea, “Trick or Treat!” and in return individually wrapped packages of childhood happiness would tumble into their pillowcase/candy receptacle for the night. On their way back to the sidewalk to meet up with us they bury their face in the bags examining their loot and confer with their siblings as they begin scheming their trades.

Batman tipped us off to where we could score the full candy bars while the adults urged one another not to miss the house at the corner where they were passing out pulled pork sandwiches for the grown ups. Rumor has it the year before the adults got shots of bourbon.

This neighborhood knows how to do Halloween.

In an ideal world these spiced pepita butter bites would be just the thing I’d like to tuck into the trick-or-treaters bags that came knocking on our door. I can just hear it now, the giddy murmuring along the sidewalk, “that house has homemade candy!” But homemade treats are frowned upon when the one passing them out is a complete stranger – I totally get that. So we reserve these treats for lunch boxes, parties, or the 3:00 pick-me-up in celebration of National Chocolate Day. I mean a day reserved for chocolate celebrating is a great day in my book. And I will gladly take any excuse to praise chocolate.

Of course these are very reminiscent of a peanut butter filled candy with the same shape but these are stuffed with a toasted pepitas that have been blended until smooth with a bit of warming spices and honey. The Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate offsets the sweetness with a good bit of brightness. A pinch of flake salt on top is never a bad idea.

With two sweet-centric holidays – National Chocolate Day and Halloween – right around the corner these are practically begging to be made.