Crispy Rice Bars - With Peanut Butter and Frosting

I found a box of Crispy Rice cereal, a 16 ounce bottle of corn syrup, some brown sugar, a bag of dark chocolate baking chips and a bag of butterscotch baking chips.

I had made them before, so I started mixing the sugar and corn syrup together in the pan. I suppose most people make them with white sugar, but I grabbed the bag of brown sugar. I figured it would add to the flavor. So, in the pan it went, on medium heat.

The pan that you will pour your rice mix into needs to be sprayed with a cooking spray. Greased pan, it says on the recipe. You can use butter, shortening or, the cooking spray that I used.

I opened my bag of cereal, got a large, plastic bowl ready and opened my peanut butter. I was toying with the idea of putting the peanut butter on a paper plate so I could just wipe it into my pan, but I decided to just pull it out of the peanut butter jar with a plastic scraper.

I used one 16 ounce bottle corn syrup and 1 heavy cup of brown sugar.

So, my mixture of corn syrup and brown sugar is mixed together in the pan. It says to stir constantly while you heat it to boiling.

Stirring constantly is probably a good idea, but I left it for a couple seconds to peer through the doorway at my grand daughter who was coloring in her chair. Grandma's are good at multi-tasking.

I'm supposed to add the peanut butter to the hot mixture and stir until smooth, plus remove from the heat source. One cup peanut butter.

Well. I slopped the peanut butter into the pan before I removed it from the heat, then started carrying the pan to the counter and stirring. Target area after stirring is my large, plastic bowl. I stirred it together and then poured it into the bowl. I sat the pan across the top of the bowl by the handles and let it drip for a couple seconds. Then, I flipped it over and scraped the excess out of the pan into the bowl.

My bag of cereal is now in the bowl and I'm stirring, scraping and flopping the rice around, trying to coat each piece. 10 cups of cereal.

Flop, flop, flop. Okay. It all looks pretty coated.

Time to dump it into my greased pan.

Instead of using a spatula to smooth my mixture, I grabbed a piece of plastic wrap and placed it across the cereal. I then, grabbed my rolling pin and smashed it all flat.

Then, when I had it all squished to the edges, I then removed the plastic wrap. Looks pretty good.

It says to put chocolate chips and butterscotch chips in a pan on low heat to melt together to spread on top of rice. Not too hot, or it will scorch they warn. I used two big bags. Maybe 2 cups each.

Well. I took some butterscotch schnapps and added a little moisture to the chips and then, not satisfied with how it was melting, added a small pat of butter.

It never really got very melted. More like a mooshy lump of soft stuff. So, I plopped it onto the top of the bars and got out another piece of plastic wrap. Again with the rolling pin.

I wasn't satisfied with how well that worked with the frosting, so I grabbed a steak knife and started pushing the frosting sideways and filling in the bare spots. Then, I put the plastic back on and moved the frosting with my fingers.

Well. It tastes fine. It looks fine. [My method will be our little secret - - and if you won't tell, I will try not to tell either]

Oh. Ooops!