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

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
In my search for easy recipes, I ended up on quite a few emailing lists - Better Homes & Gardens, Food Network, Tastebook all have the privilege of spamming me. At work today, I was browsing through recipes for "Crisp Summer Salads" and I was shocked at what passed for a salad. The first "salad" - The Layered Spinach and Pot Sticker Salad - on the list included potstickers, strawberries and strawberry jam as ingredients. Then to add insult to injury, they tell you to whip up a recipe of " Spiced Chips ". As is frozen chicken pot stickers weren't unhealthy enough. It isn't a salad just because it has spinach! Next is the Southern Cobb Salad , and to it's credit, it looks like a salad. However, I don't even want to think about what constitutes the " cheese dressing ". I'm terribly confused by the Smoked Salmon and Melon Salad . I guess it counts as fruit salad, but why I would mix salmon with cantaloupe, honeydew and blueber...
Read more

Eat This Not That Part I

Image
I recently saw a copy of the book, Eat This Not That , and I thought it was a cool idea, so I am starting my own version with products I use at home rather than at restaurants. First on my list is Eat ReddiWhip not Cool Whip. Cool whip is delicious, especially when frozen, but it was not until I bought some for myself to go with strawberries that I realized how horribly fake it is. According to Dietfacts.com, they include: INGREDIENTS:WATER, CORN SYRUP, HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OIL (COCONUT AND PALM KERNEL OILS), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LESS THAN 2% OF SODIUM CASEINATE (FROM MILK), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MODIFIED FOOD STARCH, XANTHAN AND GUAR GUMS, POLYSORBATE 60, POLYSORBATE 65, SORBITAN MONOSTEARATE, SODIUM HYDROXIDE, BETA CAROTENE (COLOR). So, they don't actually have any milk in them, they have less than 2% of one milk derivative and a bunch of additives to maintain freshness and composition. We all know hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup are bad for us, an...
Read more
Image
As promised, here is a picture of the squash risotto recipe. I have started to get into uncharted territory with this recipe, but I invited over my good friend who makes butternut squash all the time. What really threw me off about this recipe was that even though we halved the recipe, we still needed a lot of broth to cook the risotto. We used all 2 cups of the broth plus some cooking wine, and still the risotto was burning and sticking to the bottom of the pan. I think this is one recipe that cannot be cut in half, or else you can't skimp on the broth. Instead of mixing in the parmesan cheese, we sprinkled it on top at the table, and it really had a big impact on the flavor. For dessert, we had more butternut squash with cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg - yum!
Read more