Caramel Chocolate and Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats and Churros

GUTIE IS ON THE ROAD!

This is a very exciting week. I'm visiting my roommate and bae for life Karyn in Massachussets! I haven't seen her in over a month, and I'm so happy to get the chance to harass her daily again. I arrived yesterday, and the first thing we did after I got a pretty thorough tour of the town was make dessert! Karyn is kind of obsessed with Reese's PB Cups, so for her birthday last month I got her a jar of Reese's peanut butter, which she still has a lot of, so we knew that whatever we made had to have peanut butter in it. I showed her a bunch of recipes I picked out and she chose these rice krispy treats, which ended up being delish. She also wanted to make churros for some sort of weird inside joke. The krispy treats were easy enough, but the churros were uncharted territory for me. 

Krispy Treats- from Annie's Eats

Ingredients

Bottom

1 ¾ cups of Rice Krispies
¼ cup of water
¼ cup of sugar
3 tablespoons of light corn syrup
3 tablespoons of melted butter

Middle

5 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup of Reese's peanut butter

Top

3 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips
½ teaspoon of light corn syrup
4 tablespoons of butter

Directions

So these are a little more complicated than your average rice krispy treat. Instead of using marshmallows to bind the cereal together, we're using a caramel. It really isn't awful to make, you just need a candy thermometer. First grease up an 8x8 pan. Then measure out the cereal and put it in a bowl. For the caramel, put the sugar, water, and corn syrup in a small pot and cook it over medium-high heat. Stir it up until the sugar dissolves, and then let it do its thing until it reaches 235 degrees. Then pull it off the stove, stir in the butter, and pour it over the cereal. This was kinda rough for me, I couldn't figure out how to effectively stir the caramel in with a spoon, but it was too hot to use my hands. So I'm panicking and stirring and screaming because I burnt myself, and then I frantically put them into the pan as it was hardening. That's because I'm a spaz.

The rest is easy peezy. Put the chocolate and peanut butter in a heatproof bowl over an inch or so of simmering water and stir until it melts, then pout it over the caramel krispies. Put that in the freezer until it hardens, or the fridge if you have more time to kill. Then do the same thing with all of the ingredients for the chocolate topping (bowl over simmering water, stir, pour over top, chill). And then you're done!

Churros- from the Food Network

Ingredients

1 cup of water

1 stick of butter
¼ teaspoon of salt (not ¼ cup, Karyn almost did that)

1 cup of flour

3 eggs, beaten

Loads of vegetable oil

¼ cup of sugar

¼ teaspoon of cinnamon

Directions

First, combine the water, butter and salt in a pot on the stove over high until it boils. Then throw in the flour, reduce the heat to low, and stir until it forms a ball. Take it off the heat and pour in the eggs gradually while mixing. Then you've got dough! 

Now you only need like 2 inches of oil, but we used 2 quarts... Eh. Heat that to 350 degrees and hopefully set the stove so it stays there- that was a struggle. So put the dough into a piping bag, maybe fitted with a star tip if you have one. We just used the piping bag with a big hole cut in the tip. Squeeze in 4-ish inch sticks/logs/chunks of dough. Leave them in there for like 4 minutes maybe. They get brown quickly so you're like, oh they're totally done. But no, the inside has to cook, too, give it a chance! Then, put the cinnamon and sugar in a bowl so that when the cooked churros have cooled a little, you can roll them in the yumminess. 

Reviews

"*Sigh* I loved that it was crunchy on the bottom while creamy on the top, it made for a great textural experience in addition to the wonderful flavor." -The Darling Lula

"With a crunchy bottom and a creamy top, they were the opposite of what I expected, and the flavors worked so well together that I went back for more." -The Darling Reagan

"Better than anything I could buy in the store, and you looked beautiful making it." -The Darling Karyn

I think I'm the only one who ate the churros, but I thought they were delightful. Not too sweet, not too heavy, all around satisfying.