Chocolate Cereal Blocks Etc

The classic Rice Krispies cereal treat has been around for decades. Over time, I’ve noticed these cereal yummies have undergone two noticeable changes:

• Microwave directions for melting butter and marshmallows, replacing the kettle method
• Proliferation of pre-made packages

Chocolate Cereal Blocks Etc is my frequent deviation from the classic cereal treat, which I most recently prepared for a picnic. Received several raves, so I said I’d send out the recipe. Wellll, in the midst of writing it up, it started shaping up to be another blog article recipe. This recipe uses (in order) butter, caramel vanilla marshmallows and chocolate rice cereal for the cereal blocks. The ganachy icing has peanut butter meltable candies and chocolate frosting. For more details and ideas about the icing, read A Convenient Ganachey Icing.

The classic Rice Krispie blocks recipe uses 10 ounces of marshmallows, which throws a monkey wrench into cereal bar recipes if using Kraft novelty flavor marshmallows. (Curses! Kraft used to put out the novelty flavors in 10-ounce packages, but they’ve gotten greedy and now put them out as 8-ouncers!)

For convenience of those who want to make the classic blocks, I’ve pasted the very simple cooks.com recipe (printer-friendly). Deviation info follows.

CRISPY TREATS (MICROWAVE)
Printed from COOKS.COM
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1/4 c. butter
4 c. miniature marshmallows
6 c. Rice Krispies cereal

Substitute 40 large marshmallows.

Butter microwave bowl big enough to hold all ingredients; microwave marshmallows 2 minutes then stir. Microwave again 1 minute. Stir in and mix well the Rice Krispies. Butter hands and put this mixture in a cake pan, flatten, cool and cut into squares.

My deviations from the cooks.com recipe:

• Primary ingredients:
• 3 tablespoons butter instead of ¼ cup (4 tablespoons)
• 10 oz. bag of Kraft caramel/vanilla marshmallows
• 8 cups Cocoa Pebbles. Key concept is chocolate rice cereal.
• Pan: I lined the pan with wax paper that overlapped two opposite sides. I used spray oil on hands instead of butter.
• Icing: I microwave-melted 4 ounces of Wilton Peanut Butter meltable candies (available at craft stores), stirred in 4 ounces of spreadable frosting, and microwaved some more, but using lower power. I poured the warm icing over the cereal mixture and squeegeed (using old but clean tool) it into the crevices.
• Yield: The cooks.com recipe says to cut the batch into 24 pieces. I cut my batch into 48, although some came out a bit smaller than others. Your sizes might vary also, depending on how well you wield your knife. :-)