after dinner sneeze

t says: a pointed out that perhaps I’ve been posting too much about desserts, accusing me of having a sweet tooth.  Well, it’s true.  I do have quite the sweet tooth, especially as stress levels rise (e.g. little is more comforting at midnight-1-2-am than a handful of Swedish Fish … or a Crunch bar … or  Twix).  Things have been more stressful recently, as exams approached, meaning that I have a few more posts about some sweet encounters coming up … sorry a.

The first is a recipe.  It’s not my recipe – and I’m not changing anything about it, so I’ll link you to the original: Crack Chex.  As you can see, it’s not actually called “Crack Chex” … but it should be.  Basically, you melt down chocolate, peanut butter, and butter … toss some cereal in it … and then toss with powdered sugar.  And that’s it.  The end result isn’t exactly “beautiful”, but it tastes awesome!

Crack Chex ain't pretty ... but you're not making it to look at it.

Here are some tips/tricks:

1)  Personally, I use dark chocolate chips – but you might have to cut back a little on how much you use because it can easily overwhelm peanut butter.

2)  As you can see in the pic, there are some other non-Chex shapes in there.  That’s because I replace some of the volume allotted to cereal with some trail mix and/or some of those mixes of dried fruit and nuts – it really punches up the eating experience with different textures and tastes.  I recommend this tactic because without this substitution, the flavors/textures might get a bit monotonous, meaning that you might actually be able to stop eating it at a certain point.  If you do it my way, you break up the monotony so you can easily polish off an entire bowl in a single movie (especially if you get one with dried fruit).  Oh wow.  I just thought that maybe I should do this to popcorn.  That sounds amazing.  I have to try it …

3)  There is genius in this recipe.  And it’s the powdered sugar.  The powdered sugar’s purpose is not just to add sugar – it’s to make it so that you can consume a chocolate-covered snack without getting chocolate all over your fingers.  And the powdered sugar usually sticks to the treat and not to your fingers (unless you’re one of those freaks with really warm hands).

4)  It’s gluten free!!!  So that means that just so long as you coat gluten-free snacks with this chocolate-peanut-butter-sugar concoction, you and your celiac disease suffering friends can enjoy a sinfully sugary snack together.  And the kingdom will rejoice.  Yay!  Ironically, I have no idea if Rice Chex itself is gluten free or not – so before you accidentally cause a lot of horrible GI distress upon your gluten-sensitive friends, check that first!!!