Snack of the Night: Cap'n Chewy Bars

These are basically rice crispy treats with Cap'n Crunch cereal instead and a little bit of one of my favorite ingredients, almond extract. Note the high measurement of cereal compared to a normal rice crispy treat recipe. This is because the cereal is measured before you crush it, so it seems like more than it really is.




Ingredients:

• 10 c Cap'n Crunch cereal (almost a whole 14 oz. box!)
• 4 Tbsp butter or margarine
• 10 oz. marshmallows (most normal-sized packages are 10 oz.)
• 1/2 Tbsp almond extract

Begin by measuring out the Cap'n Crunch into a bowl and crushing it into courser, smaller bits. You're not going for a fine powder here, though--you want the pieces to be similar in size to the size of rice crispy cereal. The reason you're crushing it is to make the cereal a bit denser. I tried making these before without crushing the cereal, and it didn't really stay together very well because it was much larger than puffed rice and it was hard to form it into bars. After you crush the 10 cups of cereal, it should end up fitting into somewhere around 6 cups of cereal, since more of it fits into the measuring cups at once. If it's more or less, that's okay, as long as it's about in the ballpark. Here's a picture of what my cereal looked like after it was crushed:

The size of each piece will vary, obviously. Some are still whole, while some of it turned into a powder. You're going for something between these two extremes.

I went back and forth between using a potato masher and my own hands to crush the cereal. I'm not really sure which worked better. I'm thinking using my hands was a little better because I could feel exactly what I was doing. The potato masher just ended up making the stuff on the bottom turn into a powder before the stuff above it got crushed very well. Anyways, experiment and see what works best for you. After you finish, set the bowl of crushed cereal aside.

In a medium saucepan, melt the margarine over low heat. Add marshmallows and almond extract, stirring until the mixture is melted and blended, not lumpy.

Pour the marshmallow mixture into the bowl and mix with the cereal evenly with a wooden spoon or spatula. Spread and press this firmly into a buttered 13x9 inch pan. Cut into squares when cool.