Chocolate-Peanut Butter Halva

It might not look like it, but this originated as an attempt to make a homemade Reese’s cup. You might think, “isn’t that just peanut butter covered in chocolate?”, and you’d be right, in the same way that a baguette is just flour mixed with water.

The peanut butter center of a Reese’s cup is slightly dry and crumbly and much sweeter than plain peanut butter. This made me think of halva, the slightly dry and crumbly candy made from tahini (sesame seed paste) and a sugar syrup.¹ Halva is actually quite easy to make, especially if you know the basics of candy making, and with a few modifications we can give it a chocolate-peanut butter twist.

A Primer on the Mystical Power of Crystals

Candy making is, at its core, about managing the crystallization of sugar. Pure sugar will form large, hard crystals, but adding other ingredients like water or fat interrupts the crystal structure, yielding in a softer result. Depending on the quantities and types of other ingredients, you can get a range of results, from rock candy or peanut brittle on the hard, low-additive side, to taffy or caramel on the soft, high-additive side. For candies based on sugar syrup, like this one, the easiest way to control the amount of water added to the sugar is to cook the syrup to a specific temperature.

As you no doubt remember from high school chemistry class, the boiling point of water increases with the concentration of dissolved particles. Put another way, if you have your syrup boiling at a specific temperature, you know the concentration of sugar in the water, and therefore you know what the final texture of your candy will be. For halva, we want to cook the syrup to 245°F/118°C; this sugar concentration gives us a final product that’s firm and sliceable without being hard or crunchy.

There are two ingredient pitfalls to be aware of here. First, do not attempt to make this using processed peanut butter. The additives in them which keep it emulsified interfere with the sugar crystallization we’re so carefully trying to control and will result in a sandy mixture which does not hold together. Instead, look for natural peanut butter which only contains peanuts and possibly salt, the kind where you have to stir the oil back in. Second, check to see if your salt contains anti-caking additives.² These are meant to keep the salt from clumping up, but will also result in a crumbly peanut butter mess.

How to Halva

Now that you understand the fundamentals of candy science, actually making the halva is pretty easy. First, scoop out an entire jar of peanut butter–replacing the standard tahini–into a heatproof bowl, and stir in some salt if the peanut butter doesn’t already have some added. In a small saucepan, add sugar and about a half cup of water–no need to be precise with the water, since we’ll be cooking it down to a known concentration. You just need enough to dissolve the sugar, but not so much that you’re waiting forever for it to boil back off. Bring the sugar and water to a boil and then cook until it reaches 245°F/118°C. You absolutely need a thermometer here; there aren’t really any visual cues to go off of since we’re not cooking the syrup enough to caramelize or thicken appreciably. Don’t stir the syrup after it comes to a boil, or you risk introducing stray sugar crystals and causing the mixture to turn grainy. If you’re like me and can’t leave a pot alone, you can gently swirl it occasionally. It won’t really do anything, but you’ll feel better.

Once the syrup reaches temperature, pour it over the peanut butter. Stir the mixture with a heatproof spatula or wooden spoon to incorporate it as it cools in order to develop the right texture. There’s a balancing act here: agitating the mixture by stirring encourages crystallization, but it’s possible to overmix it, which results in a grainy, sandy result. At first, the mixture will be thin, but as it cools it’ll thicken to the consistency of, well, peanut butter, and soon after that it’ll begin to form a dough-like mass and pull away from the sides of the bowl. You need to work quickly here, before the halva sets: scrape the mixture into a 9”x5” loaf pan that you’ve lined with parchment paper. Fold the parchment over the top of the halva, and use the bottom of a measuring cup or something similarly flat to press the mixture flat. Press firmly to compact the halva, and try to get it into the corners of the pan before it cools too much to press further.

After the halva cools for about half an hour, it’ll have set up enough to slice–try too soon and it’ll fall apart under the knife. Pull the parchment paper sling up to extract the halva from the pan, transfer to a cutting board, and cut the slab into roughly one inch pieces. You probably won’t get many perfect cubes, but that’s fine. The really ragged ones are for you to snack on; no one has to know.

You Got Your Peanut Butter In My Chocolate

From here, finishing the halva is easy. Set a heatproof bowl over a pot of simmering water to form a double boiler, and melt a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips in it. Dunk each halva cube in the melted chocolate with a pair of forks, then remove them to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Refrigerate the cubes to set the chocolate, and you’re done.

As a bonus, you can melt an additional handful of chocolate chips and stir in all the crumbs and edges left over from slicing the halva. Scrape this mixture onto some parchment, chill it until firm, and break it up, and you’ve got yourself an extra treat. Don’t tell anyone about these either. You deserve it.

Play Around

• You can replace the peanut butter with another type of nut or seed butter, including, obviously, tahini. I’ve used almond butter, but anything else should work, as long as it doesn’t contain anything besides nuts and salt (added sugar won’t ruin the dish, but it’s sweet enough as is). Sunflower butter would also likely work here, if allergies are a concern–sunflower halva is popular in post-Soviet countries.
• Tempering the chocolate before coating the halva would give them a nice snap and shine and keep them from melting on your fingers at room temperature. Altogether a better option, but I have yet to summon the motivation to attempt to temper chocolate.
• A very light sprinkling of flaky salt would be nice if you want to play up the sweet-and-salty contrast here. If you go this route, you might want to cut down on or omit entirely the salt added in the recipe. You could also decorate with crushed peanuts (or the crumbs from cutting the cubes) or a drizzle of melted white chocolate.

Notes

1. Halva (or halwa, halvah, halua, etc.) is actually a very broad category of sweets, found from India to Greece and made from anything from flour to carrots. The sesame-based one is what I’m most familiar with, though.
2. Diamond Crystal kosher salt has no additives, but Morton does.

Chocolate-Peanut Butter Halva

Prep List

Equipment

Procedure

Notes