(10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare)
By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate
Not to spoil the fun, but aren't you spooked that Halloween goodie bags are often filled with empty calories and fat? A trick you can use to combat that is to prepare homemade treats with cereal.
Halloween parties overflowing with crafty tricks like this mean less filling up on more ghoulish snacks. And you can take "crafty" literally and make it a "DIY" craft adventure for you and your favorite costumed kidlets.
Crispy rice and puffed cereals often have no fat and a slim amount of calories. And they are versatile and easy to mix in and mold - good reason they've been the foundation of gooey marshmallow treats for all these decades.
Jodi Levine, former craft editor at Martha Stewart Living, knows well the benefits of using cereal as a craft ingredient. In "Candy Aisle Crafts: Create Fun Projects with Supermarket Sweets" she devotes a whole chapter to it.
Her cereal houses are mini masterpieces that can be wrapped in cellophane as takeaway party gifts, eaten at the party or grouped together on a serving plate or a cake platter as a centerpiece.
They are surprisingly simple to prepare, but even easier is a creative gooey spider web-like concoction adapted from a classic recipe from longtime TV fitness pro Denise Austin, when her now-adult daughters were children.
It's a web-like fudge (made with unsweetened cocoa powder that's naturally filled with antioxidants) that, once cooled, kids at Halloween parties will love to eat with their hands - if you have them give their hands a good wash first. They probably won't ever notice that the fat monster is trick-or-treating elsewhere.
Fun fare like this also proves food preparation can be easy, nutritious, inexpensive, fun - and fast. They take just 10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare. The creative combinations are delicious proof that everyone has time for creating homemade specialties and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it!
Another benefit: You effortlessly become a better cook, since these are virtually-can't-go-wrong combinations. They can't help but draw "wows" from family members and guests. These mug versions make convenient 1-serving meals. If you want to share the tasty treasures, fill a few mugs at once and microwave each separately.
SPIDER WEB-LIKE GOOEY CRISPY FUDGE
- 5 ounces (about 20) regular marshmallows
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 cups crispy rice cereal (like Rice Krispies)
- Yields 6 to 8 servings.
Use a nonstick 13-by-9-inch baking pan or, if using a regular pan, spray it with nonstick cooking spray.
Place marshmallows in a medium microwave-safe bowl and microwave on 100 percent power for 1 minute. Carefully stir in cocoa powder and microwave 30 seconds longer if marshmallows have not melted. Stir in cereal and vanilla.
Spoon into the prepared pan. Pat down (it may not fill the entire pan.) Good and gooey when eaten when completely cooled or wrap tightly, refrigerate and keep up to two days and it will be firmer and crunchier.
-Adapted from "JumpStart" by Denise Austin (DeniseAustin.com).
CEREAL HOUSES
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1 (10-ounce) bag mini or regular marshmallows
- 1/2 cup green berries from Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries cereal, optional
- 6 cups crispy rice cereal (like Rice Krispies) or 8 cups corn puff cereal (like Kix)
- Pretzel sticks, for garnish, optional
- Gumdrops, for garnish, optional
- Toothpick, for garnish, optional
- Red berries from Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries cereal, for garnish, optional
Yields vary, depending on types of containers used.
Use assorted empty containers (such as milk, cream, half-and-half or orange juice cartons), washed and dried. Open the tops of the cartons and cut out the prefolded triangles on the two sides of the carton top. Close the carton back up and tape closed with masking tape. Cut the bottoms off and cut the heights down, if desired. Spray the inside of the carton with nonstick cooking spray.
Melt the butter in a large saucepan set over medium-low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until melted. If you are making trees (with the optional ingredients), put 1 tablespoon of the melted marshmallows into a bowl and stir in the green cereal. Stir in the crisp rice cereal.
Spoon the cereal mixture into a prepared and carton, making sure to fill the pointy "roof." Let cool.
To unmold the house, squeeze the sides of the carton to loosen, and then press on the top and push and shake it out. Repeat with the remaining cartons. Reheat the mixture on very low heat, if needed, to soften.
To make a tree, grease your hands with nonstick cooking spray and mold tree tops out of the green cereal mixture. Gently push a pretzel stick into the mixture as a trunk. To stand the trees up, cut a thin slice off the bottom of a gumdrop and place the sticky bottom onto the cake stand or serving plate. Use the toothpick to poke a hole in the top of the gumdrop and stick the pretzel stick inside.
Use leftover green cereal to make "bushes" with red cereal "flowers," if desired.
-"Candy Aisle Crafts: Create Fun Projects with Supermarket Sweets" by Jodi Levine
QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: If a recipe calls for cilantro, it's generally best to try to add it near the end of cooking time because it doesn't hold up as well as other herbs and spices under high heat. This is why it is often used as a garnish, rather than a cooked ingredient.
Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet(Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.
