Chocolate Scotcheroos & My New Allergen Pledge

I don't pretend to be an expert on gluten-free foods, but I thought I knew a thing or two, considering my background. I have been compiling and checking the allergen information for the menu items we serve at my hospital for the past few weeks now. It was really frustrating when I realized how many allergens there really were in our foods, and how difficult it would be to eat a gluten-free or soy-free diet. Last week, I had a lesson in the difficulty of finding products absent of gluten, soy, coconut, dairy and many other mischievous allergens. 

I made a false assumption that Rice Krispies were made of rice and hence were gluten-free. I was excited to blog about a delicious gluten-free recipe that I could share with one of my friends with Celiac disease. Before I sent it to her, I went on the Celiac Foundation's Website, only to discover that "malt", a component in many cereals, contains gluten. Kellogg's does make a gluten-free variety from brown rice, but I have to wonder how they could taste the same, and I have never seen them in the grocery store. You probably would have to order them online. Of course, as soon as I learned about this mischievous allergen called malt, I had to look into all the cold cereals we served at my hospital. Every one of them contained gluten. I hope Celiac patients like grits!  

I've always known it was hard to eliminate allergens from the diet, but this really bothered me! So from now on, I will try to list the allergens in my recipes. I think this will bring me new awareness about the difficulty some of my future patients face.

The recipe itself was really easy and fun. I made these delicious treats with my four best friends from high school when we were craving late night sweets. One of them does not like chocolate, so we doubled the batch, and made one pan of treats without the layer of chocolate on top. I actually liked this variation better because it wasn't overly sweet. 

We had many people to occupy in the kitchen and so we decided to start melting the chocolate at the same time that we made the peanut butter mixture. This was a bad idea, our chocolate melted, and then turned chalky before we were ready to use it. We had to add vegetable oil to revive it and it was still a very funny consistency. After 20 minutes of impatient waiting, we decided to just spread the frosting-like chocolate over the treats with a knife. You also may have noticed that our chocolate layer is almost twice as tall as the website picture (above). Only after we poured all four cups of chocolate and butterscotch chips into the pan did we realize that we were only doubling the peanut butter squares, not the chocolate layer on top. The chocolate lovers did not seem to mind :)

Recipe from Kelloggs.com
Ingredients
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1 cup peanut butter
6 cups Kellogg's® Rice Krispies® cereal
1 package (6 oz., 1 cup) semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 cup butterscotch chips

Directions
1. Place corn syrup and sugar into 3-quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until sugar dissolves and mixture begins to boil. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Add KELLOGG'S RICE KRISPIES cereal. Stir until well coated. Press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Set aside.
2. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips together in 1-quart saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. (A double boiler would work great too.) Spread evenly over cereal mixture. Let stand until firm. Cut into 2 x 1-inch bars when cool.

Note: Before measuring the corn syrup, coat your measuring cup with cooking spray--the syrup will pour easily out of the cup.

Allergens: Wheat, Gluten, Nuts, Corn, Soy, Milk