oreo pretzel rice krispie treat

Hi People. After a year of silence, I am back! It has been so long that I forgot my password onto this site. Oh my.

Much has happened in a year.

The Daughter went grey-blonde and entered first year of college. I am nearing the half century mark with doom and gloom, with diet and health becoming an ever present topic of discussion.  I am also figuring out how to "help out" my son with his schoolwork, after 10 years of next to nil involvement. Don't ask.

I have done little baking exploration (diet!! health!!) and basically make my trifecta of standbys— chocolate chip cookies, brownies and cornflake crunch cookie— when occasions call for them. Today's treats, however, have made it into the rotation the past few months.

The BFF concocted this deliciousness and I want to share with you. It's particularly great in the summer months as it calls for just a little bit of stovetop heat and involves no oven. You will thank me for the cool kitchen, but will curse me when the one bite becomes two, or three, or four...

 I use miniature marshmallows so that they melt down more quickly.

One crucial technique pointer— try to keep oreos in larger chunks. Don't over pulverize.

OREO PRETZEL RICE KRISPIE TREATS

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter

1 10-ounce bag mini marshmallows

pinch of salt

4 cups rice krispies

18 oreos, crushed (I place oreos in a plastic bag and lightly tap with a meat mallet)

3 handfuls of pretzel sticks

Grease a 9x13 pan.

Over medium low heat, melt the butter. Add the marshmallows and melt down, stirring constantly. Add a pinch of salt. Remove from heat and add the rice krispies. Mix thoroughly. Add the oreos and pretzels. (I squeeze each handful of pretzels as I add them to break them down a bit.) Mix thoroughly and dump into the prepared pan. Pat down the mixture evenly. Let cool a few minutes before cutting. 

cookies and cream cookies

Surprise! I'm baaaack! It has been one year to the day since my last post. Bet you never imagined you'd hear from me again. I wasn't sure you would either. We shall see how long this foray back will last, but I thought it fitting to celebrate this break-from-a-year-long-break milestone and say hello to you all with a cookie recipe.

chocolate crunch slice

As some of you might recall, my siblings and I had to clear out Dear Dad's stuff. The first time was a MAJOR undertaking, last year was just a tidying up, and this past month, it was another downsizing. That meant looking into his freezer, and low and behold, see what I found! Lots of chocolate! 11 bars, to be exact. We won't begin to question what Dear Dad was stockpiling for, but I immediately began wondering what I could do with them.

chocolate crinkle cookies

Generally speaking, cracks are not appealing. Cracks in sidewalks, in ceilings, in heels and chapped lips- they are all very ugh-inducing. This, however, might be the one and only instance where cracks look good, even alluring. I say the more cracks there are, the better!

oreo owl cookies

These owls are a delightful treat to share with neighborhood kids- big AND small. They require no baking and are fun to put together.

candy cane blossoms

I'm always on the hunt for a new Christmas cookie to bake. These looked like they were fun, festive, and fabulous to take to a holiday party.

The dough is pretty much a stiff sugar cookie dough which you roll into balls and smother with sprinkles. The kisses are stuck on after the cookies are baked.

Please be patient and wait the 2-3 minutes before putting them on, or else you'll get something like this—

keep calm

Blogging has been, at best, sporadic the past nine months. A variety of reasons have contributed to the slowdown:

health issues (I am trying to eat better, exercise more and bake less, though with a dearth of sweets, I've found the chips)
on demand tv viewing (so easy to while away the time in front of that box,)
and (brace yourself)

jitterbug

What a catchy name for a cookie. Makes you want to do a little happy dance.

I found the recipe in an old Pillsbury Butter Cookie Cookbook. Ann Pillsbury had collected a bunch of European cookie recipes and said this one is from Sweden. I'll have to confer with The Swedish Friend and see what she says, but in the meanwhile, here it is!

ricciarelli — italian almond cookies

It started with a rumbly in the tumbly a few hours after a meal. I dismissed the discomfort. Told her to take a Tums. Talk to me in the morning.

That rumbly continued for days, always occurring after a meal. Since peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bowls of oatmeal, pasta dinners, and cookie snacks were involved one way or another, I told her to cut out all wheat and oat products.

Wouldn't you know it, eliminating glutens seemed to do the trick. We officially have a Gluten-Free Girl in the house.

I am slightly sad. My Taste-Tester, Cheerleader and Fellow Cookie Lover now has severe limitations, but it has opened up a whole new world to me.  I have started eyeing, researching and buying gluten-free products.

cashew praline cookie

'Tis the season to try new recipes. And I've found one that I crown "favorite new cookie of the month." It's nutty, crunchy, chewy, buttery, and it travels well. (Yes, be looking for some in your mailbox!)

coconut grove cookies

I made these cookies and I got thinking about cookie texture.

I am most drawn to a combo crispy/chewy texture, like in the cornflake, chocolate chip, marshmallow cookie.  I'm also a huge fan of crisp, buttery texture, like in a shortbread cookie. The ideal chocolate chip cookie, with crispy around the edges, giving way to a soft middle, is also a perennial favorite.

gooey butter cookies

The Geneva Gourmand, (friend/founder of Moveable Feast) alerted me to this amazing cookie recipe. It's a riff on Gooey Butter Cake (hello St. Louis Friends!) which I'd read about it in my wanderings on the internet. Gooey, chewy, buttery, tangy and tasty. The goo and chew comes from not browning the cookie. The tang is from the cream cheese.

chocolate caramel sandwich cookies

Have you ever had a treat which upon eating, you

• promptly ate the rest of the bag, OR
• (showing restraint) ate and savored one, then swore you would hoard and hide the rest from anyone and everyone else

Such was the scenario last week, after The Marathoner-PTA Prez-Superwoman Neighbor shared these cookies with me. I ate them all, save for one little bite. Supposedly for The Daughter.

The crisp cookie, cloaked in chocolate, contrasts brilliantly with the creamy caramel. It is beyond delicious and definitely on my top five cookie list.

ultimate chocolate chip cookie

Do superlatives such as "best" and "ultimate" pique your curiosity?  Or do you roll your eyes?  What comes to my mind is one of two things: You're really cocky and are prone to exaggeration.  Or, you've got quite the item on hand and can't wait for everyone else to try it.

This chocolate chip cookie falls in the latter category. Fabulous, decadent, delicious. The texture is perfectly crispy on the outer edge, chewy as you move towards the middle, and then just a little soft in the center.

butterscotch snowball cookies

White and powdery. Fun and tasty. Round mounds of snowy perfection. Doesn't this cookie epitomize the season we're in? I make these every winter and rarely at any other time- don't ask me why. Probably too busy making other cookies. But the recipe comes out every December, no fail.

Snowballs, aka Mexican Wedding Cookies/Russian Tea Cakes, are typically made with some kind of chopped or ground nut; in this iteration, I've included butterscotch morsels with the chopped pecans. Make sure the dough is chilled, otherwise the balls become disks- still tasty, but flat.

chunky lola cookies

What a name.  Does it appeal to you?  It certainly piqued my curiosity. Who is Lola? Was she chubby? What's in the cookie?  

For Christmas, The Sister, feeding my cookbook obsession, gave me flour, by Joanne Chang. Joanne is owner and pastry chef at Flour Bakery + Cafe in Boston. She asked her bakers what ingredients they craved in a cookie— chocolate, pecans, coconut were favorites. They then had a cookie-naming contest for customers, and the winning name was CHUNKY LOLA.

peanut butter chocolate chip pretzel cookie

The snow keeps falling, and that makes me hungry for a stick-to-your-ribs kind of food cookie.

What comes to mind is chunky and chockablock-full-of-good-stuff.  I had a yummy peanut butter/pretzel/chocolate chunk cookie this past summer at the Hester Street Fair.  The cookie was super crunchy and delicious, but the pretzel was quite hard.  Today's recipe produces a semi-soft cookie filled with chocolate and balanced out with a crisp, salty crunch from the pretzels.

wienerstube cookie

There are times when I think, "Do I want some dark chocolate or do I want a cookie?"

That would be at 3 PM, everyday.

This Austrian cookie— translated: Viennese café— combines the two quite nicely.  There is unsweetened cocoa powder, lots of butter, and then an intriguing combination of spices, including freshly ground black pepper and pinch of cayenne. I love the spicy, crunchy, buttery and chocolately nature of this cookie.  My first batch was tasty, though not much to look at (think black, rectangular biscuit),

coffee and chocolate chip shortbread

"'Tis the season" in my book means "time to try new cookie recipes," and I've found one by Sarah Leah Chase that I think you'll enjoy.

I was first introduced to Sarah in July of 1988.  The Sister inscribed Sarah's The Nantucket Open-House Cookbook to me— "Have fun cooking, experimenting and pigging out ☺"  Happily, I'm still doing all three.  Then last Christmas, she gave me Sarah's follow-up cookbook, Cold-Weather Cooking, which has many lovely recipes.  This shortbread is one of them.  (The book was published in 1990; you'll have to ask The Sister why it took her twenty years to get it into my hands.)

After trying the Coffee Toffee Chocolate Chip cookie, I was pretty sure I would enjoy it in a bar version. What's not to like with a Toll House, Starbucks and Walker's shortbread combo?

my favorite pecan bar

I have been holding off making these pecan bars, because when I bake them, I cannot stop eating them. Seriously. A pound of butter, a perfect ratio of nut to caramel filling to shortbread base— these are off-the-charts delicious.  The Older Brother eats them by the row.  The Brother #2 and Wife fight over them (I believe I once heard an accusation of hiding and hoarding.)  Even The Husband, decidedly a savory guy, devours them. You, I think, will love them.