Sunday, November 18, 2012

Halloween {or Fall} Puppy Chow

Six months later, here I am again with another recipe that I found from Pinterest. I have never made puppy chow before today but I grew up with my mom making it all the time for the holidays. It is so good and this recipe is somewhat easy. This came from the blog: www.yourcupofcake.com

I didn't take any pictures of this and my kitchen was a disaster afterwards because let's face it-I'm not the cleanest or most organized cook. 

What You'll Need:
  • 9 cups of Cinnamon Chex cereal (or any rice cereal brand but I recommend the cinnamon flavor)
  • 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
  • 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup of creamy peanut butter
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup (or 4 tablespoons) of butter
  • 1 tsp of unsweetened cocoa powder (optional)
  • one cup of Reese's peanut butter candies (the ones like the M&M's) Or, you can use any other candy
What You'll Do:
  • the original recipe suggests lining a cookie sheet with wax paper for "easy" clean up. I would do this if you are a messy cook like me
  • pour your 9 cups of cereal into a large bowl. You'll want the large bowl to be big enough so you can coat the cereal in a minute. Set aside 
  • put chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter into a small microwaveable bowl. Heat for about 2 minutes and stir every so often until smooth
  • Mix in vanilla extract
  • Pour peanut butter mixture over the cereal and stir (careful not to crush cereal) until completely covered. 
*OK here is where things got messy for me. In the original recipe, it says to put the powdered sugar into a large zip lock bag, pour in the cereal and shake to coat. Sounds simple. It's not. I don't see how 9 cups of cereal WITH the powdered sugar could be coated. Maybe my bag wasn't large enough but it wasn't pretty. If you run into the same problem here is what you can one of two things: 

1) pour powdered sugar into the bowl with the cereal and coat it from there. If your bowl is large enough, you should be able to do this
2)Or, you can go ahead and spread your cereal onto the cookie sheet and pour the powdered sugar on it that way and evenly spread it around. Whatever works best for you.

Let cool for 20 minutes. Then transfer cereal back into large bowl and mix in candies! Store in an airtight container.