The Rice Krispie Treat Incident

I know that "Rice Krispie Treat" and "incident" don't usually make it into the same sentence together, but for this afternoon, I'll make an exception.

So there I was in my kitchen, sauteing some squash with garlic for lunch. Little did I know I should have stopped at the garlic. But no - my sweet tooth got the better of me. Hmm....what is there to make? No flour, so that rules out cookies, brownies, cake, and just about anything else that falls under the dessert category. I could try chocolate milk, but that doesn't quite hit the spot. No peanut butter for no-bakes....

And then, there it was, sitting innocently next to the microwave - a brand new box of Rice Krispies. I popped in another forkful of squash and perused the back of the box. Po the Kung Fu Panda was advertising Rice Krispie Treats in the shape of his own head (which is kind of morbid, now that I write that down). I didn't have vanilla frosting or black food dye to make my dessert into a martial arts master, but no matter - Rice Krispie Treats could probably satiate my sweet tooth anyway.

I hadn't make Rice Krispie Treats since my childhood, so I checked to make sure I had all the ingredients:

Rice Krispies? Check (duh).
Butter? Check.
Mini marshmallows? Check. I don't have any flour, but I somehow manage to have a full, unopened bag of minimarshmallows in the pantry. Go figure.
Kung Fu moves? Check.

Good - all set.

After another mouthful of squash, I consulted the box for the recipe. The first one my eyes fell on was a microwave recipe. Awesome - microwave is my middle name! I cut off three tablespoons of my frozen stick of butter and put it in a giant bowl, along with four cups of mini marshmallows. The box says "Microwave on high for three minutes, stirring after two minutes." So I nuke the bowl and down the rest of my squash.

Two minutes later, I opened the microwave to find a ballooning mound of marshmallow. As I stirred it with a spatula, it deflated, revealing the still-unmelted butter at the bottom of the bowl. Hm...well, it will probably melt in the next minute, right? I gave the mixture another stir and discovered that a bunch of marshmallow goo had hardened on the edge of the spatula. In the time it took to free the rubbery goo, the rest of the mixture was beginning to harden. Better get it back into the microwave, quick - start!

At the end of three minutes, I had what looked more like a ballooned, congealed blob of marshmallow dough. Fearing that it would harden more, I dumped in the 6 cups of Rice Krispies and stirred the mass quickly. The addition of the Rice Krispies did nothing for the blob, as some of them clung to the outside of it, but most couldn't even touch the quickly hardening ball of stickiness.

I tried to spread it out in the pan, with some success. I burned my finger, but what I had now vaguely resembled the Rice Krispie Treats of my youth (even though the rubbery crust of marshmallow and the un-marshmallowed Rice Krispies on the bottom of the mixing bowl didn't). Determined to at least savor the fruits of my labor, I cut a piece of Rice Krispie Treat - or should I say Rice Krispie Brick? It was so hard it tore up the roof of my mouth while I was eating it!

"Waste not, want not" is one of my mottos, but I just don't know if there's any way to salvage the cemented breakfast cereal sitting in my 9x13 pan. Maybe I could shellac it and make building blocks for Noah to play with. Or I guess it would make a good bird feeder. I guess this one will just go right beside the Double-Butter Cookies and the Baking-Soda-Instead-Of-Baking-Powder-Metallic-Tasting Cornbread incidents in the Jenni's Cooking Blunders Hall of Fame. Thanks a lot, Kellogg's.

The moral of the story: Don't trust a fictional panda to give you a microwaved dessert recipe, even if he can do Kung Fu. Stick to squash.