Browned Butter Rice Krispy Treats with Nutella

 

Happy Nutella Day!

My contribution this year is going with the browned butter theme I established in my first post this year.

These were ridiculous. I am typically pretty good about not over-indulging in the goodies I make (caramel popcorn being the glaring exception), but I knew these had to leave the house almost as immediately as I finished them.

So, you obviously don't have to make your own marshmallows, but I have a ridiculous amount of gelatin leftover from holiday baking that I take every opportunity to use up, so prefer to make my own (and so long as you have a stand mixer, it's actually really easy). Also, I followed my dear Smitten Kitchen for the rest of the recipe. She never does me wrong. Another side note, I actually doubled the recipe. Making 2x the  marshmallow in one batch is fine, but I don't recommend trying to brown 2x the butter and mix in 2x the rice crispies into one pan. I just did it twice (so unlike me! I am notorious for preferring to make "one trip"

For the Marshmallow
In the bowl of a stand mixer:
1 ½ envelopes gelatin
¼ c cold water

In a Medium size pot:
1 c sugar
¼ c water
¼ corn syrup
dash salt

to add in later:
½ tsp vanilla

For the Krispies
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus extra for the pan
10 oz of prepared marshmallow (it actually will make closer to 11.5 oz... I just used it all) or a bag of them
1/4 tsp kosher salt
6 cups Rice Krispies cereal (about half a 12 oz box) (I used brown rice crispies. Probably some delusion that I'd be adding a smidgen of healthiness to the recipe. I couldn't taste the difference, so go for it if you are as equally delusional as me.)

For marshmallow: In the bowl of a stand mixer (set with whisk attachment), pour in ¼ cup cold water and sprinkle with gelatin and let sit for at least 5 minutes while you prepare the syrup. Meanwhile, in a medium sized sauce pan, heat sugar, ¼ cup water, salt and corn syrup on medium heat stirring until dissolved. Once it starts boiling, stop stirring and bring it to 240˚. Turn stand mixer on low and carefully pour hot syrup down the side of the bowl. Once all syrup is in the bowl, turn speed all the way up and let it go for for 5-8 minutes until fluffy. Whisk in vanilla until incorporated. Set aside.

For krispies, first butter an 8 inch square cake pan or pyrex (for ease of removal, I actually line my pan with buttered aluminum foil or wax paper).

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Keep a close eye on it and stir frequently. The butter will probably try to boil or sizzle, so don't let it do that. Stir frequently, scraping up any bits from the bottom as you do. First it will foam up and be hard to see what's going on underneath the foaming. Then the foam will subside and you'll start to see little "bits" floating in the butter. That's the good stuff. Keep your eye on those bits and when they start getting to a caramel color and the aroma is nutty, remove from heat. Don't get impatient for it to start browning; the period between the time the butter begins to take on color and the point where it burns is often less than a minute (good advice from Deb).

Once off the heat, stir in the marshmallow goop (this will be VERY sticky and hard to work with, and you will not be able to scrape every bit out from the bowl of the stand mixer. I'm sorry, but you'll just have to tackle that after you're done making the treats). The residual heat from the melted butter should be enough to melt the mallow mixture, but if it is not, turn the heat back on low until the marshmallows are smooth.

Remove the pot from the stove and stir in the salt and cereal together. Quickly spread into prepared pan. Smooth out with a silicon spatula (I found that worked best).

I put it in the fridge and let it set for about an hour then went to town adding a schmear of Nutella across the top of it then let it cool again before cutting into squares. 

National Nutella Day, 2012

It's that time of year again! Not wanting to miss out again like I did last year, I whipped together some tasty Nutella cupcakes this time. Albeit not the most creative, as I (and hordes of others) have done the same before, but sometimes you really just don't need to go reinventing the wheel.

Chocolate Cupcakes
(a recipe I've been using forever, and don't even remember where I first found it)

• 2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for the pans
• 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3/4 cup nonalkalized cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed)
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1/4 cup milk

Preheat to 350 degrees F. Prep Cupcake tins.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Increase the speed to medium-high and slowly add the sugar. Continue beating until light and smooth, about 4 minutes. Turn the mixer off and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the cocoa powder and vanilla and beat at medium speed for 1 minute more. (Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl again, if needed.) With the mixer running at medium-low speed, add the eggs, one at a time, beating for 1 minute between each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Combine the water and milk in a saucepan and bring just to a boil. Remove from the heat. (Or microwave 2-3 minutes).
With the mixer at low speed, add the flour mixture, about a 1/4 cup at a time, carefully alternating with the hot liquid into, the batter. Divide the batter evenly between the cupcake tins. Lightly drop each pan onto the counter to settle the batter.
Set the pans on the middle rack in the oven. Bake 20 minutes, or until cupcake tops spring back when you gently touch them.

Nutella Frosting

(ripped off from inspired by Smitten Kitchen's Fudge Frosting)

6 ounces dark or semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled
4 cups confectioners’ sugar (no need to sift)
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup nutella
6 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Place all of the ingredients in a food processor and pulse to incorporate, then process until the frosting is smooth. (No really... that's all you have to do. It's kind of amazing. I recommend reading Deb's comments about it on her blog for more info and tips on making it).

Happy Nutella Day, everyone!

Thanks to the (webby) organizers of this stupendous holiday: Ms Adventures in Italy, Bleeding Espresso, and World Nutella Day.

Happy Nutella Day - CupCrepe™

Nothing better than a holiday celebrating Hazelnut Chocolate Spread. And to top it off, it's apparently Crepe month in France. Is there anything better than Crepes smothered in Nutella? And is there anything better still than a cupcake built with crepes and nutella? I think not, which is why I've been conniving a way to make that happen for quite some time. So with the news of this world wide holiday approaching, I decided to take action. I am proud to introduce: the CupCrepe™.

Many discussions of how to put the project together took place. Do I make a cup out of crepe, or cut rounds and stack the crepe? Do I cut the circles, put on the spread, then stack? Do I use fresh strawberries, puree, or jam? How will they stay together without falling apart? How will the crepes stay tender, and not dry out. What crepe recipe do I use? I don't think I answered all my questions this first time, but I do think the concept is genuinely tasty, so no harm in having a couple more rounds of experimentation to work out the answers.

To start, the crepe recipe. A lady in my office exclaimed to me about a week ago that a client of hers, who is officially 100% French (thick accent and poor English to boot), gave her the "official" French Crepe recipe, and she so generously passed it on to me. I feel the need to reiterate it verbatim, simply because it was that authentic:

Begin quote:
French Crepes

Make a dozen Crepes

2 Cup flour
2 cups of Milk ( 2% is good if you want light crepe)
3 eggs
1/4 cup of butter
2T sugar
2tsp vanilla
2 T Rum or other alcohol like orange liqueur. [I used Brandy]

Firstly, put all the flour in a bowl, add one cup of cold milk and mix slowly with a wisk until it's smooth.
Add all 3 eggs, already beaten in an other bowl, you have to mix again very carrefully.
Put the butter in a microwave for a few seconds after it's melted and add it in a mix.
Combine the rest of the cold milk with sugar and vanilla.
mix again until it's smooth.

it's almost ready.

If desired, you can add a hint of rum or orange liqueur to taste.

wait for an hour before baking or no if you have hungry............

To fry the French crepes, you need a pan with just a little bit butter for the first crepes.
French crepes are very thin so you could put only a small amount of mix in a pan just enough to coat the bottom.
When the crepe is golden (it should take only a few minutes), you should turn it over and cook the other side just another minute or two.
You can eat them with powder sugar or butter or fresh lemon juice or chocolate of course!
end quote

Shamefully she did not mention Nutella as a topping, but I allowed myself the option to deviate from the recipe slightly.

So I went ahead and whipped up about 10-11 crepes with that recipe. (I did let it sit for about half an hour... even though I did have some hungry). While they were still warm, I began to layer nutella on each layer. I tried to keep it pretty thin since there were so many layers. Truth be told, I still went through half a jar of nutella to put this project together, so yeah, there's a lot of nutella per bite. But then I also snuck in 2 layers of fresh strawberries. My hope hope was that the nutella would work as the glue to hold those strawberries in place, but I think the juiciness of the strawberries was too strong and ended up liquefying the nutella instead. Still tasty, but messy. That's where I thought maybe a jam would work better, but there really is no replacement for the taste of fresh strawberries.

After building the stack up, I wanted to stick the whole pile in the fridge to let it cool enough that the nutella glue would set, but it was getting late, so I just went in for the cut. I used the shell of a Linzer cookie cutter I have since it's about the same size as the bottom of a cupcake wrapper. Punched it down through the multiple layers and lifted the whole stack up to transfer to a new plate. I'd say for the most part it worked. The top layers got stretched a bit on the initial cut, but they seemed to recover (having a nice a spongy crepe helped). Some of the strawberry layers got eschewed and were popping out in places, but the column was mostly intact. I also would prefer a taller cutter to get through so many layers. In the end, I think this method saved me some time, but will have to try it again where I cut each crepe round individually, THEN layer them altogether. It will give me more control and less worry about squeezing the toppings out through the layers. It will definitely take more time though.

So, once I had cut through as many full circles as the crepe would allow, I had quite the mess of leftover crepe and nutella. Not that it's a bad thing, but It could be put to "prettier" use. I donated this pile to my dear friend and co-worker, and she didn't mind the presentation one bit.

For the final touch, I topped each round with a dab of nutella "glue", some strawberry slices and powdered sugar. After letting them refrigerate over night, I was able to easily scoop them up and put them into cupcake liners for final presentation.

Final thoughts: The strawberries look sad and dry the next day, so this is best served fresh. I think it would be good to do with banana and maybe make a puree for every other layer of nutella. If layered individually, I think it will stay together pretty well. The other thing I would do is make the whole thing single-bite sized. Call them mini-cupcrepes, but they will be much easier to just pop in one serving. Maybe the, you could just do nutella layers with the topping only on the top, too. Let the experiments continue!

So, happy nutella day, world. I hope you enjoy my offering!

4 Flavors

A simple way to add variety to your life, I made a batch of devil's food cupcakes and topped them with 4 different flavors of frosting. Only a little extra time for each frosting, but totally worth it to spice things up.

Flavors, clockwise, starting from front.

Flavor 1: Strawberry
Regular buttercream frosting, but with fresh strawberry puree instead of milk. I topped the cupcake with the frosting, then spotted it with a couple sesame seeds and mint leaves to make it look like a strawberry top. No food coloring was used, but it could be cute to make it a little richer in red color.

Flavor 2: Kahlua
Buttercream made with Kahlua instead of milk and topped with a sprinkling of cocoa powder.

Flavor 3: Grand Marnier
Buttercream made with Grand Marnier instead of milk. Should have added orange juice or rind to the frosting mix, because the Grand Marnier by itself wasn't quite cutting it. I did top it with candied orange rind pieces, but it didn't add enough flavor.

Flavor 4: Hazelnut
First I spread a little Nutella on the cupcake, then I put on a layer of Frangelico buttercream. Topped with a hazelnut.