Experiment: Grown-up Rice Krispie Treats

This is how grown ups eat. 

There are tons of Rice Krispie treat recipes online. My quick search brought up Pinterest pages, 50 best lists, and even Krispie truffles (uh, yum!). But I didn't see exactly what I was looking for in a recipe.  So, I'm creating it.
I believe in experimenting with your food. It's the best way to get the flavor and texture you desire. Yes, you can always ask a restaurant for substitutions or to make something more or less spicy, but restaurants aren't really in the business of individualizing your dinner choices. If Burger King really wanted you to have it your way they would just send you home with a bag of groceries.
I'm not much of a drinker. I prefer to eat my alcohol. I find that a lot of "spirits" give foods a unique taste that I can't necessarily create with non-alcoholic ingredients (tequila marinade for steak!). You don't usually need much, and most of the alcohol is cooked off during the process leaving you with a wonderfully complex flavor.
That being said, I usually put a teaspoon or so of Bailey's Irish Cream in my Rice Krispie treats.  It gives them a delicious creamy taste that butter or vanilla haven't been able to provide. So, that part is not really the experiment.  I wanted to see what adding cream cheese would do to my treats.
I started off with the basic Rice Krispie treat recipe, but halved it (if it didn't work I still wanted my Rice Krispie treats). There was some eyeballing, but this is what I came up with:

Ingredients
1 heaping tablespoon of cream cheese
1/2 tablespoon of butter
10 jumbo marshmallows
1 1/2 teaspoons of Bailey's Irish Cream (Yes, I keep Bailey's in the house. Yes, I like bingo. Yes, I think this muumuu compliments my figure. What are you trying to say?)
3 cups of Rice Krispies (You can use the store brand. Kellogg's ain't paying nobody's bills.)

You'll also need: a greased pan (I used an 8x8 square) and a greased spatula for smoothing.

1. I melted the butter and cream cheese over low heat. Low heat! This recipe is so quick that you don't need to speed things up by overheating your butter. I kept taking mine off the heat so it wouldn't brown, but I hear brown butter treats are tasty too.

Low heat!

The butter melted pretty quickly. The cream cheese didn't so much melt as form a white blobby shape in my pot, but I figured that was good enough.

Ugh! Cream cheese is such a diva.

2. I then added the marshmallows. The mixture was smooth. The blobby cream cheese mixed right in. Oh, it smelled so good!

This is probably what marshmallow porn looks like.

3. I took the pot off the heat and added the Bailey's. The Bailey's always prompts the marshmallow mixture to bubble furiously so don't freak out. Mix it in to the marshmallow. It will give the mixture a lovely light brown coloring, as if it has been summering on the Cape with it's distant, but still loving family.

"Just below the marshmallow's plain facade raged a bubbling Bailey's volcano."

4. I mixed in the Rice Krispies.  Make sure you mix it well. If you don't you'll end up with some dry Rice Krispies and a blob of marshmallow mixture.

5. I turned the warm Rice Krispie/marshmallow mixture into my greased pan and smoothed it over with my greased spatula.

6. You're then supposed to wait until they cool before cutting into them...Hahahahahahaha!!!

Results?
I think I need more cream cheese. When I first bit into one I didn't think it was anything too special, but there is a really creamy, rich after note that I kind of love.  The cream cheese adds to the overall experience of the treat, but I feel as if the taste of cream cheese (that little bit of tart) gets lost. Also, these don't firm up as much as a regular treat.  At least I don't think they do. I kind of eat them all before they get to final cooling point.
You'll notice that mine are also on the thinner side.  If you put your treats in a smaller pan there will less spreading.
The raspberries at the top were supposed to be just for decoration, but they actually tasted really good with the treats.  I may have to incorporate them into my next batch. I'll definitely eat them because they're delicious, but I have not found my perfect treat yet.

Snap and Crackle were cool to work with, but Pop was clearly off the wagon during this photo shoot.

  Leave me questions and suggestions in the comments.  I can always use fresh ideas!

Great Googa Mooga 2013

This will be quick because it's late and I'm lazy.  My plan is really only to do one blog post on Tuesdays and Fridays, but I would be remiss if I didn't say something about the Great Googa Mooga.

Look, I know the Great Googa Mooga gets a lot of grief. And, I know that canceling the last day did not go over well. Vendors lost a lot of money/food, people were not informed on time, no one got to see De La Soul and Kool and the Gang. But, I still love the event. I went last year and this past Saturday, and it's not a perfect event, but it is an exciting one for me.

I love New York, but there are a lot of culinary experiences that I can't afford. Googa Mooga allows me to experience foods from restaurants that I may never see the inside of. Foods that I never knew existed are available to me.

I feel as if there are a lot of naysayers when it comes to Googa Mooga. Before the event started last year there were critics looking for everything that could be wrong. People who hadn't even gone were complaining about what they heard were problems.

That orange backdrop was mesmerizing...

 It's now a two year old event. I think the creators are trying to do something new and innovative. New and innovative is often nitpicked. There are those who want to be the one to say they knew this new thing wouldn't work. To me that's just sad. I'm not saying follow blindly, but everything about the Googa Mooga isn't a set up for failure:

1.  It's a free event. Yes, you have to reserve tickets, but without some limits on the number of people organizers and vendors wouldn't know how many to plan for. Also, the park would be overrun.

2. It's good advertisement for local restaurants. One complaint I saw was that all the vendors are local. So? Why is that bad? Just because a restaurant is there doesn't mean that all of New York patronizes it. I love Melt Bakery and would live off of their ice cream sandwiches if my husband would let me, but not everyone knows who they are (which is pure silliness). Granted, one of my favorite vendors comes from my hometown of New Orleans, but my body craves Crawfish Monica and I refuse to apologize for that.

3. There's more than just food vendors. This year, my husband and I sat through a joint talk with food historian Sarah Lohman and Jonathan Soma on the Futurist movement and food. And, it was great!  It was funny and we both learned a lot. We even got a demonstration of a Futurist "meal."

Last year, I saw a food "battle" using only seasonal foods from a local csa.

That year I also saw Hall & Oates live on stage.  My friends are sick of how often I tell them about my love of both Daryl Hall and John Oates' facial hair, and "Sara Smile." Because "Sara Smile" is a song to live your life to.

Eeeeee!!! Hall & Oates! Hall & Oates! Hall & Oates! And facial hair!

Before the cancellation, DeLaSoul was supposed to play right before Kool and the Gang. I think the universe might have exploded with awesome if that had actually happened, so we might want to chalk the cancellation up to divine intervention.

Matt and Kim performed on Saturday.  Clearly, it was children's concert.

4. It's a community event. There is something about attending an event where everyone is there for a similar purpose. I'm not a festival going woman. Around these parts, most street fairs are the same funnel cake and pan flute affairs. Just pick up and drop on another street the next week. Due to the way the ticket situation works, most Googa Mooga attendees are New Yorkers. It's also walking distance from my apartment. This is a true local event. I think that's something to celebrate.

 
There is a chance the Great Googa Mooga will not be back next year. That saddens me. It will never be without its problems, but I think with more work this fledgling festival can become a great festival. 

For more pictures and posts from this year's Googa Mooga visit my Twitter feed @kitchenabsurd.  While you're there you should probably follow me.  You know, for good measure.

Italian Meringue Buttercream Workshop with Vinny Buzzetta!

I belong to a cake decorating meetup group. Not because I'm some decorating wunderkind (I never graduated past the Easy Bake Oven school of decorating), but because I want to learn to make beautiful cake-like artistic expressions. Most of the members are pretty proficient so I never really go to the meetups because I'm more of a rank amateur. I understand the science. I can make everything taste good, but I have horrible decorating habits. And, I develop the shakes whenever it's time for me to put frosting to cake.

Hm...maybe "belong to a cake decorating meetup group" is too strong an expression.

Did I mention that Vinny is cute? I learn best when the teacher is cute. Looking at you Mr. Magnuson...

BUT! The Italian Meringue Buttercream Workshop was perfect for me. We would be learning about the nuances of buttercream and some basic cake decorating techniques! And, I'm happy to say, those things happened, and they happened well.

Apparently, Vinny Buzzetta has a tv show on the WE network. Something I wasn't totally aware of because I'm one of those crazy people that only watches tv via the internet. But,Vinny's a good teacher. To misquote (and take out of context) that great philosopher Keith Sweat,'He may be young, but he's ready.' The room was a mix of amateurs and hardcore hobbyists, which can be a tough crowd to teach. You don't want to leave the newbies behind, but you don't want to bore the more experienced folks.

More experienced folk.

So, on a Thursday night a bunch of people got together in the kitchen of Aunt Butchie's Bakery and learned about Italian buttercream. 

Yes, that is a blow torch. All baking should involve a blow torch.

He started off by giving us the difference between American buttercream, French buttercream, and Italian buttercream. There was definitely an Italian meringue buttercream bias in the room, but I went with it because when in Rome's bakery...

One thing that can be very difficult for the amateur cake decorator is a getting a flat cake, but Vinny recommended using  rings to shape your cake. 

"One ring to rule them all."

He also made a good case for being diligent with your crumb coat. I'm lazy about a crumb coat. If I do one (bad habit!), I do one half-assed coating and hope for the best. Vinny did four coats, and that cake looked nearly perfect in its smoothness. By taking his time he's prepped the cake for whatever design he wants to throw at it. His cake is a smooth canvas. Mine is usually a piece of burlap that I found in the remnants bin.

There was also talk of fondant. Ugh. Fondant.

Image courtesy of Rosen Georgiev/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Vinny took us through the steps of making Italian meringue buttercream. One of the keys to great buttercream is something I preach, but would do well to practice more: Patience. Good buttercream should not be rushed.


He also showed us how easily the buttercream takes on flavors. The overall taste isn't as sweet as your usual powdered sugar and butter concoction (American buttercream), but that allows the taste of your cake to shine through. You can mix in vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter, jams, fruit purees, and Oreos. Oh, Oreos. Oreo buttercream has to be a reward for doing good deeds in life. 

I tried to take a clear picture, but my eating kept getting in the way.

Towards the end of the workshop he demonstrated how to make shell and heart designs with the buttercream. Let's just say that some people were better at it than others. And, by others I mean me.

She looks so happy here...

Vinny ended the evening by giving us cake. Banana spice cake with Nutella flavored buttercream. Vinny is a kind man and will be rewarded with Oreo buttercream in the afterlife.

If you're in the New York area and interested in taking classes with Vinny at Aunt Butchie's you can email either Vinny (vbuzzetta@gmail.com) or Aunt Butchie's (classes@auntbutchies.com).   

 Vinny has a fondant class coming up next week on May 29th.