As many of my friends knows, I’m a confessing chocoholic (please follow the link). This isn’t like being confessional in a theological sense, where you come to your positions theologically through much study, prayer and leading by God. This is…of the flesh, completely! Chocolate is my Kryptonite, my weakness when it comes to eating. I love chocolate. Well, that should be overly redundant by now.

However, since my doctor strongly recommended I go on a diet and my wife helped me, I have cut out almost all chocolate intake. In fact, the first three weeks on the diet we were completely chocolate free, along with being beer free, wine free, bread free, cheese free, potato chip free…,well, anything that I could eat that wasn’t absolutely good for me. And guess what? The diet worked beyond my wildest dreams. After the first four weeks, which is the main portion of the weight-loss portion of the diet, I went from a dainty 265 lbs. to 238 lbs. After that, the diet focuses on stabilizing at the 238 lbs. But I didn’t stabilize at all. I kept losing weight. Now I’m down to an even 230 lbs. for a told loss of 35 lbs., and I may get into the 220s if I continue eating the way that I have been.

But alas, the need for chocolate. Heidi knew that I loved chocolate, so she went to work trying to find chocolate that would keep us in the guidelines of our diet, meaning that it had to be butter free, sugar free, fat free, etc. You might think that it was an impossible task, but not for Heidi. She came up with a simple recipe of mixing cocoa (a major portion of what makes up chocolate) with coconut oil (no relation to chocolate), added some Stevia and then froze it. This was about week three of the diet, so when she presented it to me, I was extremely grateful.

I bit into the chocolate not knowing what to expect. It was quite different than the chocolates we are accustomed to. First of all, it’s not full of sugar. Yes, the Stevia gave it a hint of sweetness, but the taste was more chocolate and almost sour in comparison to the other chocolates we are used to eating. I loved it.

Then something happened. The more she made it, the more my tastes changed, and the more I loved it. That has been another one of the surprises to this diet, my tastes have changed. While in the first part, I was craving all kinds of foods I could not have, after being away from those foods, I only began to crave what was on the diet. The last hold out was last week when I was craving Saltine crackers. Strange, I know.

What was special is that Heidi gave me a piece of chocolate the she dipped in all-natural peanut butter, and it was a taste from the heavenlies. I told her she should make some peanut butter cups, and she being the loving wife she is, she did!

The two I have eaten were splendid. While you have to keep them in the refrigerator because the chocolate has a low-melting point, the cups are best eaten at room temperature, meaning they will be much more messy. But messy is worth it. Here are the final peanut butter cups.