Friday, April 27, 2012

Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies Treats

Frosted Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies Treats

Yes, you read that right—Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies Treats and I’ll be darned if they don’t taste just like a cinnamon roll—but in Rice Krispies treats fashion. 

A couple months ago I found Kraft Cinnamon Bun Marshmallows at the store and grabbed a bag.  (They are since hard to find and I’m not sure you could find them, but try your local Super Target—they seem to have all the good limited edition stuff!)  You could totally make these treats with regular marshmallows because it’s really the added cinnamon/brown sugar/butter mixture that is spread over them before rolling them up and the drizzled icing on top that makes them so cinnamon roll-like. 

Simple as can be.  I just made Rice Krispies Treats and pressed them onto a 15 x 10 inch baking sheet.  I then removed them from the sheet and laid them on a cutting board.  After spreading the cinnamon mixture over them, I rolled the thin Krispies up just as I’d do cinnamon rolls.

Ready to roll Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies Treats

Ready to roll!

Cinnamon Bun Krispies Rolled

Rolled and ready to slice!

Cinnamon Rolls Treats

All lined up and ready to be drizzled!

Ready to frost Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies

Yeah, they’re good just like this—but a cinnamon roll isn’t a cinnamon roll without the icing on top!

Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies 4-26-12

Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies Treats, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

8 ounce bag of Cinnamon Bun Marshmallows**

2 ounces regular miniature marshmallows**

4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter

6 cups (165 grams) Rice Krispies cereal

For the cinnamon filling--

4 tablespoons (2 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup (110 grams) packed brown sugar

1  1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)

For the icing--

2 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoons corn syrup

1-2 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Spray an 15 x 10 inch baking sheet lightly with cooking spray.  Set aside.

In a large microwave safe bowl, combine the marshmallows (**The Cinnamon Bun mallows come in 8 ounce bags, you want a total of 10 ounces of marshmallows, which is what size the bag of regular miniature marshmallows come in**, so if you can’t get the Cinnamon Bun mallows, just use regular!) and the butter.  Microwave the marshmallows and butter in 30 second intervals until (it only takes about 1 1/2 minutes).  Add the cereal and stir to combine.  Press the cereal mixture evenly in the baking sheet.  It will spread out prefectly!

In a medium sized bowl, combine the brown sugar, softened butter and cinnamon and stir with a fork to mix well.  Remove the Rice Krispies Treats from the baking sheet and set them on a cutting board.  (They should be sturdy enough to pick up and lay the whole thing on the board without breaking.)  Spread the cinnamon/butter mixture evenly over the treats.  Roll the treat up starting from the long end.  Slice into 16 (about 1 inch each) rolls.  Set each one down on the baking sheet.

In another medium sized bowl, combine the powdered sugar, corn syrup and vanilla.  Add one tablespoon of the milk and whisk together (you can also do this in an electric mixer, but I did it all by hand and it was easy enough).  Until the icing is the desired consistency, add a little more milk at a time until it is the thickness you’d like.  Put the icing in a plastic zip top bag  and snip of a corner.  Drizzle the icing over the “cinnamon rolls”.  Let sit until the icing is set—about 30 minutes.

Cinnamon Roll Rice Krispies Treats 4-26-12These are being eating quickly at our house!  Since I know I’ll have a hard time finding the Cinnamon Bun Marshmallows again, I plan to make these again and use the regular ones.  I think they’ll be just as good!

Friday, April 20, 2012

Healthy Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles

Healthy Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate Truffles

These tasty, perfectly peanut buttery and dark chocolaty treats are just the thing for a little sweet bite when you need one.  I love that they are actually pretty healthy and you could easily make them gluten free. You might think peanut butter and chocolate ARE gluten free, but I happened to use Naturally More Peanut Butter which has a few added ingredients, like flax seeds.  The ingredient list also includes wheat germ, so these aren’t gluten free, but you could use any natural peanut butter you’d like and most are just peanuts and salt.

I can’t even take credit for this and I’m sure there have been lots of chocolate peanut butter truffles on the internet, but I was/am happy enough with how these turned out that I needed to share them with all of you.  I actually got the recipe from the Coconut Recipes website.  It was a newly submitted recipe by a reader, Megan from Glendale, California.  I liked that these have coconut flour and coconut oil.  I have a bag of coconut flour that I’ve been wanting to find more things to use it up with.

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles (Healthy) These couldn’t have been more simple to make.  Some natural peanut butter was mixed with just a touch of agave nectar (you could also use honey) and some coconut flour.  After forming the peanut butter mixture into balls, they are frozen for a short time and then dipped in melted dark chocolate.  That’s it.  You could easily make a bunch of these for a party or as gifts.

Healthy Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffles, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from Coconut Recipes

6 tablespoons (96 grams) natural peanut butter

1 tablespoon agave nectar (or honey)

pinch of salt (if using unsalted peanut butter)

1/4 cup coconut flour

3 ounces dark chocolate

1/2 teaspoon coconut oil

Line a baking sheet with waxed paper.  Mix together in a medium sized bowl the peanut butter, agave, salt and coconut flour.  (This easily mixes together with a spoon—no need for a mixer!)  Once it’s all combined, form the peanut butter mixture into teaspoon-sized balls.  Set on the waxed paper and freeze for 30 minutes.

Melt the chocolate and coconut oil either in a glass microwave-safe bowl or in a double boiler on the stove over medium heat.  Stir until melted and smooth.  Let sit for a few minutes so it’s not too hot before dipping each of the peanut butter balls into the melted chocolate.  Set each one on a fork, set it down in the chocolate and spoon more melted chocolate over it until covered.  Tap the edge of the fork on the bowl to let any of the excess chocolate drip off into the bowl. 

Set each one on the waxed paper and let sit until the chocolate hardens (it starts to immediately because the peanut butter is frozen).  You can also set the sheet full in the refrigerator to set up completely when they are all finished.  This smaller recipes make about 12 truffles, you could easily double the recipe.

Healthy PB Dark Chocolate Truffles 4-16-12

This post is being added to Lisa’s Sweets for a Saturday over at her delicious blog, Sweet as Sugar Cookies!

 SweetasSugarCookies

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

TWD—Baking With Julia—Lemon Loaf Cake

TWD--BWJ Lemon Loaf Cake 4-7-12

Baking With Julia for Tuesdays With Dorie this week is the Lemon Loaf Cake on pages 252-253.  Don’t go freaking out on me or anything, but I made it exactly as the recipe was written (again). 

I made this cake for Easter dessert and we had some family over.  I had also made a carrot cake, a cheesecake and some cookies.  The cheesecake was plain, so I made a blueberry compote, some raspberry coulis and for the boys’ sake, I opened a can of cherry pie filling.  Everyone could choose if they wanted any of those on their cheesecake or the lemon cake.

Lemon Loaf Cake Slice

Since this cake isn’t very “light” with its many eggs, sugar, heavy cream and butter, I only took a taste of it.  I thought it was good!  I do wish I had taken the time for put a lemon glaze on it.  I’d planned to, but ran out of time before company came.

Lemon Loaf Cake with Bluberry Compote

I thought the cake was definitely good with the bite I took (okay, two bites, one of each with the two berries)!

Lemon Loaf Cake with Raspberry Coulis

After sending some of our family home with cake, there were a few pieces left.  I stuck them in the freezer and on a day I feel like splurging, I keep thinking it would be really good lightly toasted.

If you want this recipe, our hosts this week are Truc from Treats and Michelle from The Beauty of Life.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Hershey’s Coconut Crème Kisses Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hershey's Coconut Creme Kisses Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies—I used my favorite chocolate chip cookies.  But for this coconut version, you can use any recipe you’d like.  But I’m telling you, that favorite recipe of mine (adapted from the NYT/Jacques Torres famous chocolate chip cookie recipe) is THE BEST—and I’m not the only one to think so.  The cookie is requested by friends and family just about everywhere I go.  If you haven’t yet, when you go to get the recipe on the link I’ve left, just know that it is SO worth having bread flour and cake flour in your pantry if for nothing but to make these cookies whenever you need want to.  So there’s my little speech about that.

Like I was saying, yesterday I made the big batch of cookies (sometimes I halve it).  I needed to try out my new Pampered Chef small cookie scoop.  I ordered it recently at a neighbor’s party after being fed up that the grocery store scoops I’ve been buying keep breaking so easily.  Turned out the new scoop was smaller than I thought, but I love it!  I have the other sizes of scoops (though not Pampered Chef and I’ll be getting those soon!).  With my big mixing bowl full of chocolate chip cookie dough, I decided to make a number of different kinds of cookies.  I looked in my “baking stash” cupboard and found a bag of the new already unwrapped chocolate caramel Rolos, some Andes Mint pieces and some Hershey’s Coconut Crème Kisses.  It was time to play!

I made some of the cookies “plain”, some I stuck a Rolo on as soon as they came out of the oven.  With some of the dough, I added Andes mint pieces and then with more of the dough (it makes a lot, I tell you, especially small cookies) I added some toasted, unsweetened shredded coconut and topped them with a Hershey’s Coconut Crème Kiss as soon as they came out of the oven.  I will say that the Kisses that are solid chocolate all the way through tend to melt more on a hot cookie—even after I froze the Kisses to try to stop them from melting down quite so much.  They ended up mostly making a delicious chocolate/coconut pool on the top of the cookie.  So while still good, I wanted them to keep their Kiss shape.  I figured it out with the last cookie sheet of cookies.  As soon as they came out of the oven and I topped them with a Kiss, I put the sheet in the freezer for a few minutes.  They ended up not melting too much—word up though, don’t’ do like I did and put them on a section of the freezer that is not flat.  I ended up spilling half the batch into the freezer!  Enough of them were saved for a few photos!

Coconut Creme Kisses Chocolate Chip Cookies

I actually (oops) didn’t even photograph any of the other cookies and Kevin took all the leftovers to work with him this morning.  The Rolo ones were cute, too, and good.  And of course the mini version of the chocolate chip cookies were great!  I have made Andes Mint Chip Cookies before, so I already knew those would be good.  Looking back at the photos for that Andes Mint link makes me want to make them again.  I actually liked the Hershey’s Kisses Coconut Crème Chocolate Chip Cookies so much, I didn’t even taste one of the mint ones yesterday. ;)

Go ahead, play around with chocolate chip cookies—it’s yummy!

Monday, April 09, 2012

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies—Secret Recipe Club

April SRC  Peanut Butter Oat Cookies w/Chocolate 3-23-12

I love getting new assignments for the Secret Recipe Club each month.  I can’t help it, each time I do, the first thing I do is search the assigned blog for cookies!  I love trying new cookie recipes and/or being inspired by some I see and coming up with creations of my own.  I actually enjoy just spending time on whichever blog I receive to secretly make something from and looking at everything they’ve posted. 

This month the blog I had was Carol’s blog, No Reason Needed.   Carol and her family live in Ontario, Canada.  She has a fun "about me" section on her blog.  Sounds like a really fun lady.  Check it out.

After looking through Carol’s blog, I found a couple of cookie recipes I wanted to try.  Today I will highlight one of those that I actually made, and will blog about the other cookie in another post soon.  Both cookies I made were fantastic!  Today I decided to tell you about a great tasting cookie called Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies.  Carol posted that she got these cookies from the Spring 2010 Kraft What’s Cooking Magazine.  At the time I chose to make the cookies, I ended up only making half a batch and a few adjustments to the recipe.  I have since made the cookies again with the same great results!

Here’s my half recipe version with the adjustments I made, which also include high altitude instructions or adjustments for the regular recipe.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chunk Cookies, by Katrina, Baking and Boys! adapted from Carol at No Reason Needed

3/4 cup peanut butter (192 grams), I used Skippy Natural, creamy

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

5 tablespoons granulated sugar

1/3 cup, minus 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar

1 large egg

3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup quick cooking oats

7 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour (you could also use all purpose flour)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup (6 ounces) dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Cream together the peanut butter and butter in the bowl of a mixer.  Add the sugars and beat for a couple minutes.  Scrape the sides of the bowl.  Add the egg and vanilla and beat well.

Whisk together in a small bowl the oats, flour, salt and baking soda.  Add the dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture.  Beat just to combine.  Stir in the chocolate chips.  Using a cookie scoop or a tablespoon, put cookie dough on the baking sheet.  Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes.  Cool on baking sheet for a few minutes, then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.  Makes about 18 cookies.

**The recipe I made have adjustments that I have found work well in our high altitude in Utah.  To make the cookies more as the recipe suggested use these amounts instead---6 tablespoons granulated sugar, 1/3 cup packed brown sugar and 6 tablespoons flour.

April SRC pb oat chocolate cookies 3-24-12

So happy I made these!  Check out Carol’s blog and all the great stories she shares as well as the yummy food!

SRC-button

Thursday, April 05, 2012

Spring Marshmallow Rice Krispies Treats and Gummy Bear Rice Krispies Treats

Spring Marshmallow Rice Krispies Treats 4-3-12

You know of my love for making all kinds of delicious RICE KrISpIeS TREATS, I have now over 15 fun Rice Krispies Treats recipes on my blog.

Having bought a bag of the Easter bunnies Kraft Marshmallows recently, I decided to throw some of those in some good ol’ “plain” Rice Krispies Treats.  They easily became fun, festive, colorful and even more ooey, gooey and marshmallow-y.  (Add the colored marshmallows after you’ve melted the other marshmallows with butter, mixed in the cereal and it starts to cool a bit so they don’t melt too much!)

I really started thinking of what I could do after Kevin recently bought a giant bag of gummy bears for an out of town trip he was going on---and then forgot to take them with him.  After he returned from his trip, he challenged me to make something with the gummy bears.  Challenge on!

Well, did you know that even if you make chocolate covered gummy bears, they will still melt all over when they are baked into a cookie?  Yep, they do.  I kind of knew they would, but tried it anyway.  I was hoping that maybe chocolate covering them would protect them a little.  No—pools of melted colors all over my parchment paper covered baking sheet, oozing out of the cookies.  Not too big of a loss, since I wasn’t thinking it would work, I only made a few cookies with gummy bears, but at least I tried.

That was when I decided the gummy bears needed to be put in some kind of no-bake treat, so of course I decided it needed to be Rice Krispies Treats.  When I made the Easter bunny mallow treats, I put half of it in a 9x9 inch pan with just the extra marshmallows, then with the other half, I stirred in some gummy bears, too and put that in an 8x8 inch pan.

Gummy Bear Rice Krispies TreatsThese are a big hit with the boys as they like anything with candy.  I prefer just the ones with the Easter bunny marshmallows.  Is there a better, easier treat out there than Rice Krispies Treats.  Just follow the recipe on the box (or there is also one on the bag of marshmallows) and add other things to it—easy, fun, and yummy! 

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

TWD—Baking With Julia—Pizza Rustica

TWD Pizza Rustica

Pizza Rustica—sounds like pizza, but is more like a quiche or savory pie.  We made that this go-round for Tuesdays With Dorie--Baking With Julia.  It is fun to be making these recipes in Baking With Julia now.  I like that we go from simple Irish soda bread to something more involved like Rugelach or this Pizza Rustica.

I like the pie.  Even though I used a low fat ricotta, I know that this “pizza” is not really low fat, so I’ve tried not to eat too much of it.  My only problem with it was the crust.  It was quite a wet dough, did not specify any chilling time and I could not get it to roll out without sticking like crazy to my well-floured surface.  I persevered and ended up pressing the bottom crust in to the pie plate.  Since the top crust wasn’t going to cooperate with being rolling out and cut into lattice strips, I cut it into fun circles and placed them over the top of the pie.  The little circles were much easier to work with getting off the counter. 

I was happy that I even decided while buying ricotta to get some prosciutto instead of just using ham or bacon like I was going to and it was really good.  The only change I made to the whole recipe was that I used low fat ricotta instead of whole milk.

Pizza Rustica

I think this would be good with a different crust, like just a regular pie crust.  Not sure what my problem was with this one, but I followed the recipe exactly.  Maybe the original recipe came from someone who measures flour with a heavy hand.  I weighed mine.  Either way, this is a great pizza pie for a brunch or even breakfast or lunch, whatever, you could have it for dinner, too.

If you want the recipe, Emily from Capital Region Dining or Raelyn from  The Place They Call Home are the hosts this time and they’ll have the recipe posted for you.  Lots of Pizza Rustica viewing for your hungry eyes over at TWD Headquarters.