Cooking Experiment/Review: Surprise Pumpkin Treats

It's been a bit since I've posted. Penelope's been sick and we've been focusing on getting her better. On the weight loss side of things, I didn't lose any weight last week. In fact, I gained a little...and I do mean a little...like 0.2 pounds. I'm not worrying about it.

I was going through the paper on Sunday and I found a recipe (and a coupon!) for Rice Krispy Treat pumpkins with chocolate candy in the middle, appropriately called "Surprise Pumpkin Treats." I thought they looked really cute and very easy. So I added them to my planner and decided to make them this week.

The directions started off just like any other Rice Krispy treat - melt butter in a pan, add and melt marshmallows. This is where the directions differ. You're supposed to add food coloring to the melted marshmallow to make it orange. Then you add the Rice Krispies and stir until well combined (easier said than done!). At this point, you're supposed to butter up your hands and shape 1/2 cup portions of the gooey-ness around chocolate candy (I used Reeses mini peanut butter cups). Once they cool, you coat them with green frosting to look like vines, and top with a green gum drop.

They were super easy to make, as the recipe promised. The hardest part was getting the Rice Krispies to mix with the marshmallow. And, they were very tasty! Because I had shaped the mixture while it was still warm, the Reese's cups melted a little bit and got all ooey gooey themselves! Travis had one and also liked them.

He did have a couple of complaints, however, which I tend to agree with him on. The gum drops I bought were "spice drops" so the green ones taste like spearmint. It doesn't taste bad, but its a weird flavor to go with the treats. Also, the frosting I used was the canned frosting (per the directions). While it was easy to decorate them, the frosting tastes like its been canned and doesn't really taste like frosting. We have a couple of ideas to remedy this and will be trying it out later (probably next week).

Fortunately, my sister wanted a couple tomorrow so she'll be getting some, and we've got band practice tonight so I'll be bringing some for my guys and Travis will bring the rest to work tomorrow, so they won't be sitting around my house all day begging me to eat them (Don't ask what happened to the last batch of regular treats I made...)

If you'd like the recipe for these, you can click the link below:
Surprise Pumpkin Treats