Bake-N-Blog: Holiday Edition!

The lovely Kelly over at JAX does design was kind enough to organize a kind of virtual cookie exchange for bloggers and today is the big reveal day! The concept was simple: every participant had to choose a holiday treat recipe from Food Blogga to try out and then share the results. I made Rah Cha Chow's recipe for Scotcheroos with a few minor variations of my own ;)

This recipe was really easy to make and, because I substituted Rice Krispies for Special K, they are kind of like a fancier holiday version of your standard rice krispie squares.

Here's what you'll need to make them:
6 cups Rice Krispies
1 cup white sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup peanut butter
1cup  chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips

Measure the cereal into a large bowl. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the sugar and corn syrup, and bring to a rolling boil.

Remove from heat, and stir in the vanilla and peanut butter. Pour the mixture over the cereal and mix well. Press the mixture into a greased pan. Because you're not going to bake anything you can use any size or shape pan you choose. Use a smaller pan for thicker bars or a jelly roll pan if you want your bars to turn out thin. Also work as quickly as you can throughout these steps because this stuff gets STICKY!

Melt the chocolate and butterscotch chips together in the microwave, stopping and stirring every 30 seconds, until smooth and well blended. The original recipe called for 3 cups of chips but that seemed excessive so I cut it back to about 2. To be honest, I think I could have used even less.

Spread melted chocolate over the top of the bars. Chill until set. Then the instructions said to cut them into bars but, not wanting to scratch my pan, I kind of cracked it like an ice cube tray and the whole thing came out in one clean piece. Amazing! And you can see how thick that chocolate is.

The recipe didn't tell you this but I learned pretty quickly that you want to wait for the bars to come back up to room temperature before you try to cut them. These bars are really dense and it was a challenge to cut through them even after I warmed them up.

Now for the most important part, you want know how they taste? They are delicious! The butterscotch and chocolate mix just right with the hint of peanut butter. My husband and I both love them and I would definitely make this recipe again. If you make them as thick as I did then just be sure to keep them at room temperature so you don't loose any teeth trying to bite into them!

Now that you've read my entry, be sure to click over to Bake-N-Blog: Holiday Edition to see what everyone else made. At last check there were 15 recipes and counting. Maybe you'll be inspired to do a holiday food exchange of your own!