Make a batch of mini-Jack O’Lanterns with menacing fangs, stunned “O”-shaped mouths and jagged grimaces. Place them on a dark grey tray and present them at your next Halloween gathering and prepare for the shocked responses of creeped-out guests:
“They’re so cute!”
Wait. What?
Obit clerk Lauren Gardner got first sight of these snacks when I brought these snacks to work for taste-test remarks, and unprompted offered that observation. Other comments reinforced the not-at-all-scary sentiment.
“They’re adorable, and so festive,” MT said (she was at work as I concocted them and saw the finished products for the first time when Lauren did). “Very peanutty,” she added, “much better than a regular Rice Krispies treat.”
“It was just a pleasant surprise, nothing out of the ordinary but very good,” editor Roger DuPuis said. “We can all use a smile, and this brought us one.”
OK. If fright delights are on your menu, these almost surely won’t do the trick. But then, making a variation of Rice Krispies treats into anything truly scary may be a heavy lift. Yet if these are far from chilling, they got nothing but praise for the flavor. Well, almost nothing but praise.
“I don’t eat peanut butter,” managing editor Joe Soprano insisted. Regular readers may have noticed Soprano rarely joins in the newsroom tastings. So, why no PB for this J? It’s a tragic tale going back to the Agnes flood, when valley residents struggling to recover got truckloads of free food. Joe says his family got so much peanut butter he swore he’d never eat it again.
The peanut butter, though, is what sets these apart from other Rice Krispies treats, and most tasters approved.
“I loved it,” page designer Lyndsay Bartos said. “The peanut butter was great and reminded me of a Butterfingers candy bar.” Upon hearing the comparison others in the newsroom, including yours truly, murmured agreement.
“It was really different,” Lauren said after declaring them nearly too cute to eat. “The peanut butter was definitely a nice surprise. All my friends would eat them if I made them for a party.”
“I thought they were very cute,” reporter Patrick Kernan said in what was to be last taste-testing, as he left the paper for a move to Maryland a few days later. “I liked the taste of peanut butter as opposed to a plain Rice Krispies Treat. How did you get the faces on them?”
That’s easy. Buy one of those little tubes of black icing hanging in the baking section of most grocery stores and wield it a bit like a pen to make the face of your choice.
The recipe is simple and straight forward. A few observations from my experience:
While I had doubts about the food coloring overcoming the brown the peanut butter brings, they were unwarranted. I followed the recommendation and mixed 10 drops red to four yellow and they came out fine.
Your peanut butter choice may make a difference. We were low on Smuckers Natural, and I opted to try Jif natural, which adds molasses and thus some extra sweetness (I still favor Smuckers for most uses).
I thought about skipping the Tootsie Rolls on a few because some people may not fancy them. As it turned out, one of our tasters was no fan, so you may want to make some sans the faux stem. On the flips side, thanks to the peanut butter, if you take a little bite of the Tootsie Roll and a bite of the Rice Krispies, you can get a bit of Reese’s Peanut Butter cup effect.
The recipe calls for green fruit roll ups, cut into leaf shapes and added near the Tootsie Roll stem. Schiel’s Family Market’s shelves had precious few roll ups of any color, and zero green. Frankly, decorated pumpkins (as opposed to freshly picked) never have leaves on them anyway, so no loss.
Lastly, a comment relayed to me by reporter Jerry Lynott, who also does not participate in taste tests but did decide to take one home to daughter Sarah (MT and I both wrote about cooking with the farm fresh eggs Sarah started selling under the moniker “Sarah’s Coop”). Jerry’s daughter found the treats “hard,” which I’m pretty sure comes from the fact that you form them into a sort of ball to make a pumpkin shape. I found myself compressing some of them to get what I wanted. I thought they were a bit hard at first too, but I can report they softened a bit after a day or so on the kitchen counter.
Dobru Chut!
Pumpkin Rice Krispies Treats (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, adapted from savoryexperiments.com)
3 tablespoons butter
½ cup creamy peanut butter
10 ounces marshmallows
Orange food coloring, or about 10-12 drops red food coloring and 4 drops yellow
6 cups Rice Krispies
12 Tootsie Roll Midges
Green fruit roll-ups
Black frosting for decorating
Instructions
Melt the butter and peanut butter together in a large saucepan, stirring frequently. Add marshmallows and food coloring, and stir with a wooden spoon (the mixture won’t stick as much to wood).
Remove from heat when marshmallows are melted, and stir in Rice Krispies. Mix until well-blended.
When mixture has cooled enough to handle (it shouldn’t take long), form into 12 balls about 2½ to 3 inches in diameter. Push a Tootsie Roll in the top of each one. Cut small leaves out of the fruit roll-up and place next to the Tootsie Roll stem. Use frosting to decorate like a jack-o’-lantern.