Rethinking Those Treats

 A fun snowy day activity is making Rice Krispy Treats. It's an easy recipe to whip up. There's no baling or flour or yeast to contend with. Yet these squares can be livened up and eleavated to the next level of deliciousness.

Eric Kim gave his spin on them in Wednesday's New York Times food section. He adds in black sesame seeds fried in browned butter ad give a heady dash ofsesame oil Doing such will add a dark peatnut butter flavor and cut through all that marshmallow-y sweetness. It's reminiscent of Japanese and Chinese sweets made with the seeds . The recipe is pretty much close to the original save for that addition.Over the years the New York Times Food section has produced some interesting variations of the Rice Krispie treats. There is Julia's Moskin's adaptation where browned butter is used when the marshmallows are melted. This sounds like something I would like. The browned butter gives it a nuttiness  but also a rich buttery taste. Butter and vanilla should be added to the recipe. for a more vegan option try Melt plan butter which works just as good as the real thing. You can also use vegan marashmallows as well which you can buy on The All Natural Candy site.

What else could you do to vary the recipe. Add  mini chocolate chips would give the treats an extra layer of flavor. Another idea is dipping the ends in melted dark chocolate (using milk chocolate may give them an overpowering sugariness). Use the 90 percent dark to counteract all that sweetness. Then try dipping them in crushed peanuts or sprinkles just to make them fun. You could add peanuts or any kind of nut to the recipe as well just for a different flavor. Surprisingly raisins can also go into the mix along with Craisons. The last again is a niuce tart and tangy foil  and can make the squares taste less cloying if you're not into super sweet. Coconut also works and sorts of makes them like crunchy Mounds bars.Here's a big kicker. for a bright taste of sunshine add lemon juice, zest and extract to the recipe to give them a kind of lemon bar vibe. This is great if you want a more summery , kind of lemonade taste to your snack.  You can also do the same with freshly squeezed orange juice and orange zest.

Give the treats a different spin. They can be buttery or lemony, rich with chocolate or with oranges or coconut. No matter how you make them, they're still a great snow day snack.

Summer Baking Alternatives

It's the middle of summer and you're craving  homemade brownie or cupcake, Yet baking on a humid day van be disastrous. However there are still homemade sweets you can create to satisfy that sweet tooth.

One of the easiest sweet treats to make is the Italian ice granita. This is a crunchy ice  with only three ingredients - water, pureed fruit of any kind and granulated sugar , You could add a squeeze of lemon or lime if you want. The entire mixture is poured into a tray (preferably a  metal one) and then frozen for about thirty to forty-five minutes.Take it out of the fridge and drag a fork over the surface until it looks mushy and textured. Remember to keep breaking it up until there are no more large chunks. Pop back into the freezer for four hours before serving.A really decadent treat is coffee granita served with a side of whipped cream.Coffee granita can be made with instant coffee or espresso, depending on the strength you like. Just melt sugar and syrup together, add the coffee and a teaspoon of vanilla. Freeze the same way as you would for the fruit version.  Serve with a side puff of whipped cream and a light drizzle of chocolate sauce.Another sweet icy treat is ice cream. There are a lot of good no churn recipes, from Melissa Clark's peanut butter one to the ow fat one that has frozen sliced bananas as a base.

If you're still craving something as crispy as a cookie and as chewy as a brownie think Rice Krispie treats. This classic recipe is a super easy one , especially if you use the microwave. It's melting three tablespoons of butter with five and a half cups of mini marshmallows on high for three minutes. Pour into a greased pan, add six cup if the cereal and stir. Even out and flatten the mixture. Cool and cut into two inch squares. If  you want to make them fancy melt a mix of semi sweet chocolate chips and a tiny bit of butter in a microwave. Drizzle onto the treats. What is good about these Rice Krispie treats is that they can be also poured into round pans to create a cake. Layer on top of each other. Use the chocolate drizzle as filling and icing, then decorate with sprinkles or chocolate curls. Another sweet no fuss ideas is a pudding pie using an already made pie shell. Think a chocolate pudding spiked with a drop or two of mint extract in  a chocolate cookie crumb shell. Top with Cool Whip or Reddi Whip and add chopped Andes mints. It's also the perfect summer dessert too.

There are plenty of treats that don't require a hot oven to make. Settle with a cool sweet treat. It's a great way to combat the summer heat.

Little Pop Ups Of Sweetness

 All it takes is creativity and flour. It seems out of work pastry chefs are making their dreams come true during these rough days by starting their own pop up bakeries. It's a great way not only to make money but get your product out to a sweet tooth hungry crowd.

Food section veteran Pete Wells wrote about this phenomena in yesterday's New York Times Food section. Pastry chefs have experienced hard times in the past few years. Restaurants have concentrated on serving a plethora of appetizers and main dishes on smaller plates. Diners are not enthusiastic when dessert comes, , ordering something simple like a shared panna cotta. It also doesn't help that these eateries are not creative or enthusiastic anymore either when it comes to desserts.Instagram is also to to blame here. It's lured talented pastry artists to create the next meme , like the Cronut. Yet there is still a need for pastry chefs and bakers to create interesting and delicious treats.Joy Cho realized this when a miniature Bundt cake pan caught her eye during a shopping trip with her mom to Williams -Sonoma. She bought it and the next day she was busy making up a sour cream batter . By February first she was taking orders for the mini Bundts. The initial batch of gem cakes sold out. People were picking them up at her home in Clinton Hill Brooklyn,

Other pop ups are arising.Kelly Miao who worked in the pastry departments at such top restaurants as Bar Boulud and Dominque Ansel Kitchen now gets creative. She bakes snack sized pound cake cubes called Kemi Cubes. These are about the size of an iced cube and are cloaked in vanilla and chocolate icings similar to black and white cookies. Boy Blue Coffee and Goods , run by Michael Davis offers mostly savory baked good like sourdough pretzels and everything but the bagel focaccia, which is a focaccis dotted with an everything bagel seasonings like poppy and sesame seeds , along with garlic and onion bits. He also sells sour dough bread kits with flour and starter included. Shuna Lydon runs Seabird bakery out of her Flatbush Brooklyn apartment. Here she creates kits of sourdough English muffins with preserves and salted butter. along with Rice Krispie treats made with browned butter and matcha powder . Two pastry chefs, Marissa Sanders and David Yang started Wrightwood and Sawyer give the element of surprise . Each week two boxes , one savory , one sweet and one mostly savory arrive with a dozen different treats. Every  pop up is legit thanks to a state licensing exemption that allows home processors to sell baked goods with minimal oversight. All they need is consumer grade ovens and fridges for storage, supplemented by a utility shelf and sawhorses to work.

Pop up bakeries may be a new facet of pandemic life. They'll introduce to the talents of many bakers and pastry chefs, allowing us to sample their creations. It's a way of becoming New York favorites.

The Perfect Cookbook For Young Home Chefs

 Home schooling kids right now is not fun. Yet imagine a fun and tasty way to do so. A new cookbook has come out and it makes not only kitchen work a learning experience but also a fun intro to home cooking  and baking. It's a great way to bring out the home chef in your kinds.

The book is Kitchen Explorers :60 + Recipes, Experiments And Games For Young Chefs (American's Test Kitchen 2020) and written by the chefs and writers at the great PBS show, America's Test Kitchen. Like the show it's filled with informative facts about all different aspects of cooking and baking. This is primarily a tween book, perfect for ten to thirteen year olds but younger kids with an interest in cooking will also enjoy it. As with their other cookbooks, America's Test Kitchen has a section on cooking terms defined. There is also a page on defining terms associated with experimentation.This is not a traditional recipe book with chapters on breakfasts and lunches . Rather , it has  the first chapter on a variety of  diverse kid friendly recipes plus make it your way challenges. The second chapter is devoted to science experiments and the third has a wide variety of puzzles and games, that not only expand a child's knowledge of food but also their vocabulary as well. It really is a fun book,Kids can learn how to make their own sea salt (!) just by combining kosher salt and plain water. There's a taste and smell test involving Jelly Belly jelly beans along with an experiment involving butter and water. The games are neat too.Kids can design their idea of a food truck or their perfect meal. There are quizzes about fruits and vegetables and foods' origins as well as a foodie version of "I Spy".

Are the recipes hard? No, and they can be made easy with adult supervision. There are such after school classics as peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and giant chocolate chip cookies.Kids will love the amped up version of Rice Krispie Treats (along with the history of both the cereal and the treats themselves) that include chocolate chips and broken graham crackers. For a fancier snack there is the pesto flatbread pizza that introduces kids to such diverse foods as pesto and naan bread. Traditional recipes such as meatballs and sauce are also included for young chefs to make for a hearty dinner.Even more fun is the one for bean and cheese quesadillas that only require four ingredients. A plus is that the recipe includes a rhyming game involving  the ingredients. These dishes can be topped off with the fudgy mug cake for dessert. This is a take on the commercial mixes and it's rich in chocolate thanks to the addition of chocolate chips and cocoa. A side bar has kids writing down their observations about the cakes and how they went from liquid to solid in no time. Kids can also appreciate the recipe for old fashioned blueberry muffins that teaches them about traditional baking. There are also fun snack recipes for buttered popcorn, yogurt parfaits and smoothies. Young home chefs can also make their own no bake energy bites and wash it down with the recipe for flavored seltzers.

Kitchen Explorers : 60 + Recipes, Experiments, And Games For Young Chefs is the perfect book for kids learning from home these days. It teaches kids not only how to cook but about science and geography. It's the perfect tool not only young home chefs but students too.

The Wedded Bliss of Marshmallow And Cereal

Whoever thought of mixing Rice Krispies and marshmallows was a genius. There's nothing like a buttery square  - or two - or three of the amalgam along with a glass of milk or coffee.The best part - they're easy to make.Even a five year old kid chef can whip up a decent batch.

This American classic really is a classic. The squares or buns, as they're sometimes called were first made in 1939 by Malitta Jensen and Mildred Day at the Kellogg Company's home economics division as a fund raiser for Camp Fire Girls. Many years later, in 1995,  the company mass produced them for the public. They're called treats here and in Mexico while the Canadians and the Brits called them squares.Kellogg's has also offered a breakfast cereal based on them. They may have stolen the recipe from Mary Maltby's  1938 cookbook It's Fun To Cook which was slightly different. Hers was a mixture of  butter , sugar, molasses,  puffed wheat cereal and surprisingly vinegar.Ms Day didn;t like using the molasses, claiming it was too sticky to work with and subbed in the marshmallows. Kids had to wait for two years, until 1941,, when the recipe was first published on the box. Day was celebrated in April of 2001 when Iowa State University created  the world's largest Rice Krispie treat. It  took eight hours to construct and used 818 pounds of cereal , 1,466 pounds of marshmallows and 217 pounds of butter. This giant treat was twelve feet long, six feet wide and two feet deep. The whole state of Kansas could have munched on it. Its' final weight was 2,480 pounds, In 2010 the record was broken by Californians who made a whopping 10,460 pound treat!!!!

(Lucky is in the background, contemplating this human treat)
The recipe is pretty basic.It's one package - about ten ounces - of marshmallows melted with three tablespoons of butter. Add six cups of the Rice Krispies and stir until well coated. Using a buttered spatula or wax paper evenly press the mixture into a well greased (use butter) 13 x 9 x 2 pan. Cool and then cut into squares. The microwave version is faster. Just zap the butter and marshmallows on high for two to three minutes.Always use butter  - never margarine for the classic taste. You can sub in marshmallow creme though which won;t compromise the flavor.. There is a luxe version .that requires an entire stick of butter !!  It's Karissa's from her blog Sweet As A Cookie blog. Not only is it drowning in the good stuff there's also  a teaspoon of vanilla paste added for more flavor. I am raring to make this one but adding my own spin with using a drop of Neilsen-Massey's vanilla instead of the paste to the mix.. I may even commit sacrilege by adding the teeniest pinch of sea salt to offset all that sweet. Another aspect is that the treats can be adapted for any holiday. Right now there are recipes  on the website that feature the mixture  cuts into festive flowers and Easter eggs. Both are fun treats to any kid-centric Easter party. It's just adding food coloring to the marshmallows for the different colors and then cutting them out with greased cookie cutters.. The Rice Krispie eggs can be dipped in dark chocolate to offset the sugariness. and then dipped in pastel colored sprinkles.

Rice Krispie treats are not just an American classic but American comfort food. Buy them or make them. They're just a delicious marriage of cereal and marshmallows with a kiss of butter.