Recipe FAIL: Cheerio Treats

This may surprise some of you, but I have never made Rice Krispies Treats before.  I didn't even realize it until last night, when my kids (okay okay, and me too) were asking for a treat and I needed to do something quick.  For some reason, my first thought was, Rice Krispies Treats!

Since I had never made them before, I had to look up the recipe.  Funny enough, I didn't actually have any Rice Krispies cereal (or any fakey counterparts) and so I googled around to see if it was common to sub-in Cheerios instead.  (because what LDS mom doesn't have Cheerios on hand at all times?)  Turns out, I found this recipe- basically the same as the other, but with Cheerios in place of Rice Krispies.

Score.

Except...

I'm still trying not to eat dairy for Hazel, so I decided to sub out the butter for coconut oil.

I go to my closet and check on the marshmallows.  I have one almost-full bag of regular marshmallows (the campfire ones) that I'm pretty sure I bought over a year ago when Iris was still living with us, that we only whipped out once to roast some (probably a grand total of 6) over a fire.  Alternatively, I had another, unopened bag of fresh, new, mini marshmallows I just got, in case we ever had another hankering to make some marshmallow-toothpick sculptures.  (because I discovered at conference that the ones we had were pretty stale and hard.  As you can see, we're not typically a marshmallow eatin' family.)

So, of course I pick the old bag of large marshmallows, so I can get rid of them.  (Jay always makes fun of me for proclaiming, "we need to get rid of this, so we're having it for dinner."  Waste not, want not!)

These powers combined resulted in a large mass of clumpy, gooey marshmallow mash that refused to melt and started browning and toasting.  I was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen, so I just decided that this must be as melty as it gets (although it wasn't the vision of "melting" that I had foreseen) and plopped it in with the cheerios in another bowl.

Well, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I ended up with a giant, white, gooey glob, now coated in cheerios.  So, I did what any logical person would do (oh wait.  they'd probably throw it out at this point.  waste not, want not!  carry on...) I started stretching it apart, two handed, trying to get some of the Cheerios inside the glob, hoping to make the mass a bit more homogeneous.  Satisfied that I had done my best, I quickly spread/mashed it out into a pan while nearly breaking my teeth, trying to scrape some of the hardened goo off my stirring spoon.

The Frog wanted to add his finishing touch and dumped a bunch of chocolate chips in the middle portion of the pan.  (which I quickly tried to spread around before they all melted there).  There were tons of unincorporated Cheerios left in the bowl, and for some reason I felt like they belonged with the others, so spent some time spreading those around, hoping they might stick as well.  (theyyyy didn't)

Excited by our scavenging success, we all sat around the table with our plates, awaiting our Cheerio creation...

Let's just say it was sometimes dry and crunchy (and gum-scratching), sometimes stretchy-gooey-yummy, but mostly hard and tooth-removing sticky.

After we devoured our bits of disaster (The Frog actually proclaimed it to be "fantastic", clearly excited to show off a new word he learned recently, though I know the truth, since neither child finished their portions...) I put the kids to bed (after a good tooth-brushing session) and promptly threw the rest in the trash.  (sorry, no photo)

After a bit more googling, I discovered that there are a few things that can go wrong with Rice Krispies Treats:
1) don't use margarine (and maybe coconut oil either?)
2) fresh marshmallows melt better (oops)
3) mini marshmallows melt better than campfire ones (oops)
4) browning marshmallows = bad.

Yep.  I love to bake bread.  And now pie.  I can make a roux in my sleep, yet I royally screwed up "The classic, original, no-bake dessert that is easy to make" and have still never made Rice Krispies Treats.

The end.