Nutella & Pomegranate Chocolate Cups

The barrage of holiday gift baskets and chocolates have started to trickle in at work. I work in a smaller office this year, and we don’t get quite as many treats delivered to our office compared to the last office I worked (and where Finn still is).

Every week in December the office would receive at least two different gift baskets brimming with all sorts of goodies. Cheese, chocolate, crackers, nuts, you name it. I was – and I didn’t even plan it – fortunate enough to be about 10 steps from the kitchen, therefore ensuring I had first dibs on all the goodies.

In fact, Finn and I shared a cubicle wall, and the second one of us noticed there was new food in the kitchen, we’d knock on the dividing wall to let the other know. We had a code. A food code.

This is where the bonding started.

With all those treats sitting in the office kitchen at all times during the holidays, it’s a wonder that I didn’t grow ten pant sizes. It’s probably best I don’t work there anymore, although I do find myself missing those delicious (and free) goodies.

Oh well, I can just bake my own.

So much more satisfying! There’s something so relaxing to me about putzing around in the kitchen, working with Klaus (yeah, I named my stand mixer, deal with it), sampling little bits of treats before and after they go into the oven. Baking is fun, it’s relaxing, and it generally makes the house smell amazing. Plus, the resulting treats that line my kitchen counter make it all worth it.

I had an idea for these Nutella and pomegranate chocolate cups just a few days ago, and I had to make them right away. They’re so simple to make – albeit a bit messy – and INSANELY GOOD.

I mean it, they are INSANELY GOOD. All caps are necessary. I don’t know what I was expecting when I made them, but definitely not what I got.

Let me give you a little analogy: you know when you dig into a box of Purdy’s chocolates, but the little sheet of paper telling you what they all are is missing, so you just take one and hope for the best? Well, these cups were sort of like that, but instead of gagging because I picked a gross cherry-filled one, I immediately squealed with glee because of how delicious they are.

Dark chocolate cups with a centre of creamy Nutella and sweet and tangy pomegranate seeds. The juice from the seeds mixes in with the Nutella, creating this wonderful, creamy, delicious filling.

I only compare them to the cherry-filled Purdy’s chocolates because they have a similar creamy, fruity filling, but that’s it. I HATE those cherry-filled chocolates, maybe because they taste so fake and nasty, so I would never ever post something similar to those on this blog. These chocolate cups, though? They are amazing x 1000.

These cups don’t require any baking, they require only three ingredients, and are incredibly easy. They are, as I mentioned, a bit messy, but I really don’t see a problem with creating a bit of mess when you’re working with chocolate. If you have to lick a bit of chocolate off your hands or forearms, so what? Yumm.

I started these by lining a mini-muffin tray with liners and melting some chocolate chips in the microwave. I need to be very careful when heating chocolate in my microwave, because for some reason if I leave them in for too long a fuse blows in my kitchen. I have no idea why. Any other kind of food is fine, it’s just the chocolate that does it. Maybe my microwave can’t handle the smell of melted chocolate.

Anyway. Once your chocolate chips are melted, pour about a teaspoon into each mini muffin liner. Use the back of a small spoon to coat the chocolate up the sides of the liners, leaving a little cup of chocolate. Freeze these cups for 10 minutes until they firm up, then fill them with another teaspoon of Nutella, then a few pomegranate seeds. Melt the remaining chocolate, then pour over the tops of the cups, making sure to cover all the seeds. Let them harden in the fridge for 20 minutes. That’s it.

Like I said, so easy. I think you really have to try these to understand what they taste like. Usually pomegranate seeds go wonderfully on main dishes like pasta or salads, but rarely do I think of them mixed in with chocolate.

You could, if you really wanted to, skip the Nutella in these things. The result would be a delicious dark chocolate cup with the seeds inside. But I highly recommend using Nutella, because, like I mentioned above, it mixes in with juice from the seeds and tastes absolutely decadent.

These would be wonderful Christmas gifts! They’re easy to make (so you can make lots in a short amount of time!), they’re incredibly pretty, and they’re unique enough to seem crazy impressive.