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Peanut
Butter and Chocolate Rice Krispy Treats in a Dorm Room
with Chef Peter Swift
After
recently reheating pizza, making an
italian meal, making
chai and making
applesauce in a hotpot, I decided to move on to one of the most
basic foods known to man: Rice Krispy Treats. This is a food
that even children can make, and a beloved American food. It
got the US through the depression and the Cold War, so I decided it
should get me through finals week. Rice Krispy treats are very
basic - they're made of butter, marshmallows and rice krispies...in
the order. However, since I'm not a mere child making treats with my
mom for my school's bake sale, I decided to kick it up a notch (bam)
and use chocolate rice krispies and add peanut butter.
I haven't made rice krispy treats in quantities of less than 100 in
many years, so I wasn't quite sure what the recipe even was
anymore...but I was far too prideful to look it up. I figured
that it was probably about a bag of marshmallows and a stick of
butter. Turns out, that's about twice as much butter as you
need, and if you're adding peanut butter, you'd want to use even
less...so the finished product was a little less rigid than normal,
but still delicious. Here are some pictures from the
adventure:
 This
is me stirring the marshmallows into the melted butter. Over a
stove, this usually takes just a few moments...unfortunately, the
hotpot made it take forever!
 I
added some peanut butter (a couple of big spoonfuls), and continued
to wait while the mixture melted. It smelled very, very good.
 It
is getting a little more melted, but this was probably 10 minutes
into it! I was starting to wonder if it would even work.
I decided to close the lid and stop stirring for a while.
 Now
I'm starting to see some real progress. I tasted it at this
point, and it was delicious. It would have been excellent over
icecream at this point (in fact, I have a recipe for a peanut butter
sauce that basically calls for peanut butter, butter and corn syrup,
which is more or less what we have here).
 The
rice krispies (or "Cocoa Krispies") wouldn't all fit in the hot pot,
so I used a large pitcher that I had on hand. I covered
everything with butter first, so it wouldn't stick too much.
 I
eventually added the whole box of rice krispies, which is quite a
bit more than I was supposed to use, but I think I made too much goo,
and it spread to all of it pretty well.
 With
the addition of some peanut butter and chocolate chips, I had a
pretty good looking tray of rice krispy treats. I used a
plastic container and wax paper as my mold for the bars. I'm
pretty pleased with how it turned out!
I was afraid at one point that this whole incident would be
marked up as a hotpot failure instead of a success, but in the end
it all turned out ok. I actually made them for Lindsey and her
roommate to congratulate them on finishing college. I also
needed a distraction from studying for finals. |
