Hellooooo and good morning — I'm posting this winner up on the blog because so many people reached out after seeing my Instagram story (featured above) and wanted a recipe! I wasn't intending on posting anything for this, but it got so many responses that I figured I would go on ahead and post the recipe. 

This honestly took less than ten minutes, and all it requires is six ingredients, cupcake liners and a perfectly functional freezer — I'm pretty sure you could use the fridge too, but the freezer is definitely a move. 

Let's be real, fam, who doesn't like chocolate and peanut butter? And yes, some of you have tree nut allergies and whatnot, BUT you could also fill these bad boys with a little dollop of jam or honey or coconut butter or whatever your heart desires. These are gluten free, refined sugar-free, dairy-free....and are super easy to pull off...and to make it even BETTER...surprisingly enough (or maybe not surprising at all) all of these ingredients are from Trader Joe's! The homeland!

LET US BEGIN. *Quick side note, because I hadn't planned on posting this recipe and only made a single serving, I didn't take any other pictures than the one above. Maybe I'll make more in the future...but I was inspired by these almond butter guys over at  Pinch of Yum. 

Here are some quick little buzz words for all of you wondering what they taste like:

A smidge coconutty (three words, sorry not sorry)
Fudgey
Happy
Lovey
REMINISCENT of real peanut butter cups, but they aren't so that's fine. 
Totally guilt-free
Healthy fats, am I right?

You might just want to eyeball some of these to meet your personal taste preferences.

• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• 1/2 cup cacao powder
• 1/4 cup maca powder (optional, you can just supplement with cacao if you want)
• Agave to taste
• 3 Tbsp of flax meal
• 1/2 cup of nut butter of choice — I used Trader Joe's chia and flax peanut butter

1. Gather about 12 cupcake liners (more or less depending on how thick you want yours) and place them in muffin tin. 
2. In a small bowl, melt coconut oil in microwave for about 15-30 seconds until liquid. 
3. In small increments, add cacao and maca powders to the melted coconut oil until blended, and add agave as needed (I found I only needed about a tablespoon). Then once evenly mixed, add flax meal. 
4. Using a glass measuring cup or a spoon, pour a thin layer of the cacao-coconut mixture into the bottom of the liners. 
5. Pop those bad boys in the freezer for about 5 minutes or until mostly hard — coconut oil melts and solidifies fairly easily, so this should not take long.
6. Dollop a small spoonful of nut butter (or jam/coconut butter) into the center of the cupcake liners on top of the already hardened chocolate. 
7. Top off each cup with the remaining chocolate mixture and ensure the nut butter is covered completely. 
8. Place them back in the freezer for 5 minutes or until hard, and they are ready to enjoy!

*I might make more this weekend, so I can take nice photos of them all cute and stacked and whatnot..... :)*

Peace, love, and peanut butter cups. 

 ...and then I felt like bars were too simple. Too EASY. Anyone could make a bar! This is EASTER! I have to make this a showstopper!

So I just used the same recipe and put them in a different pan...and BAM. Honestly, it just felt more like a complete, holiday dessert than a backyard treat for the kiddos. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but when someone pulls out a circular glory treat out of the ole kitchen, I'm all in. 

Long story short. Happy Easter! We had a simple dinner, so I wanted something light that would compliment that as well. We have massive citrus trees that have a lot of fruit in the winter/spring, so our lemon tree was just begging to be plucked for this very day. I made them a few months ago with oranges, which were incredible; they were definitely more sweet than tart, but I'm super interested in making them with grapefruit to get that rich pink color....will update...if there are updates, if that ever happens.

Anywho, as some of you know, I just completed Whole30, so I decided to make a normal (dairy-free) lemon tart for everyone and a gluten-free, refined sugar-free one for myself. Ultimately, the GF/DF one came out more like a lemon-coconut caramel tart but, hey, we live and we learn and I still ate half of it, so that's success if I ever saw one. 

I'll put up both recipes if you're interested, but fair warning, the GF/DF tart will come out brown only because the coconut sugar is brown, so the yellow of the lemon does not shine through as much as with the white flour and white sugar combo. I'm adding a picture of the GF/DF one to the VERY BOTTOM because it's not as pretty as the one with normal flour, but #realtalk it was still bomb.

Note to reader: I'm aware that it is Easter, so I'm sorry I did not make a "rising dessert" to fit the occasion.

Crust:

• 2 cups of flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 sticks of butter (I use Earth Balance, which is dairy-free and awesome for baking)

Lemon:

• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• Zest and juice of 4 lemons
• 4 eggs
• *Top with powdered sugar

*To make gluten-free/refined sugar-free, substitute:

• Flour 1:1 for blanched almond flour
• Sugar 1:1 for coconut sugar (yes, it will make your mixture brown)
• Butter 1:1 for solid coconut oil (definitely will make it more of a coconutty/lemon bar)