Chocolate Rice Chex Treats

You can make crispy rice treats with Cocoa Krispies, but it just ends up being too sweet.  I prefer to replace some of the butter with unsweetened chocolate.  (Yes, you can use margarine.  It will taste better if you use butter.)

The picture shows a double batch made with the smaller amount of chocolate.  If you want a dark chocolate taste, use 1 oz for every 10 oz. of marshmallows.

You can try different cereals, but avoid cereals that have more than 3 or 4 grams of sugar of per serving.  You get all the sugar you need from the marshmallows.  I sometimes replace 1 c. of the Rice Chex with Crunchy Flax.

3 T salted butter, plus extra for pan
1/2 ~ 1 oz unsweetened chocolate
10 oz. marshmallows
1/2 tsp vanilla (optional)
6 ~ 6 1/2 cups Rice Chex

Butter an 8x8 or 9x9 pan, and save some of the softened butter for finishing.  (I usually leave it sitting on the piece of the wrapper that I cut off.

Melt 3 T of butter and the unsweetened chocolate in a large sauce pan over medium-low heat.  Stir in the marshmallows and continue to heat until fully melted.  If you're using extra vanilla, stir it in before adding the cereal.  Use a folding motion to mix in the cereal until everything is covered with the chocolate marshmallow, and then pour the mixture into the prepared pan.

Use some of the reserved butter to grease either your fingers or the bottom of a clean measuring cup, and press the cereal mixture firmly into the pan.  You'll need to re-butter the fingers or cup 2 or 3 times to keep the cereal from sticking.

Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature before turning it out onto a cutting board and slicing into squares.  Store in a container with a tight lid, or take to a party where they will all be consumed before they go stale.

She can make a cherry pie, gluten-free

We found sour pie cherries at the Traverse City Farmer's Market, so I brought a quart home to make a pie.

The pie crust is best if you make it 4-24 hours before, chill it in the fridge, and let it rest at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before rolling.  But it also worked just fine with a 45 minute chill before rolling.  I think if it had been colder, I might have been able to do a better lattice top, but it was late, and I was tired and gave up easily. Cutting the dough recipe in half and making a crumb topping might work better.

I pitted the cherries while they were cold from the refrigerator, stirred in the sugar, cornstarch, and flavorings and then let it come to room temp, stirring occasionally.  The sugar helped break up the lumps in the cornstarch and bring out the juice from the cherries.


Pie Dough
420 grams 40/ 60 All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend
3/4 t salt
8 T salted butter, cold, cut into 1 T chunks
8 T vegetable shortening, cold, cut into 1 T chunk
Ice water

Filling
4 ~ 4 1/2 c. sour cherries, pitted
3/4 ~ 1 c. sugar
1 T corn starch
a drop of vanilla (< 1/8 tsp)
a drop of almond flavoring (< 1/8 tsp)

Place the flour and salt in a food processor with a metal blade, and pulse until the flour is fluffed up.  Drop the butter and shortening over the flour, spacing out the chunks so they touch as little as possible.  Pulse 10 - 14 times, until the butter is cut in, leaving some larger pieces.  Drizzle the ice water into the chute of the food processor, pulsing until a ball of dough comes together. I make my GF pie dough slightly wetter than a wheat pastry, without gluten you can't make it tough, and it helps soften the grittiness of the flours (especially if you leave it to rest in the refrigerator overnight).

Pit the cherries.  Stir in the sugar, cornstarch, vanilla and almond flavoring.  If the cherries are cold, allow the mixture to come to room temperature, stirring occasionally.

Divide the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap, pat each half into a thick disk, wrap tightly and chill in the refrigerator at least 45 minutes.

Remove one disk from the fridge.  (If it's been refrigerated more than 2 hours, give it 15 minutes to warm up before rolling.)  Unwrap the disk, place it between 2 sheets of parchment paper, and roll it out.  Remove the top parchment paper, and use the bottom sheet to help support the pastry as you transfer it into a glass pie plate.  Tears, breaks, etc can easily be pressed back together.  If you don't have enough dough to make a good edge on one side, trim off a piece from somewhere else and squish it together.  Gluten-free pastry is more like play dough than wheat pastry, and can be treated as such.

Pour the room temperature cherry filling into the pastry.

Roll out the top crust, cut it into strips, and attempt a lattice top.... or just make half batch of pastry and find a crumb topping recipe, substituting your GF blend for the wheat flour.

Line a rimmed cookie sheet with aluminum foil, and place the pie pan in the center.  Bake at 350 F until the filling is bubbling and the pastry is brown and crisp.  Mine took 45 minutes with the convection fan running.  The pastry looks very brown because of the teff flour in my all-purpose blend.