brown butter

Who hasn’t had a Rice Krispie treat? At least here in the States, they were in just about every lunch box (remember those bright blue packages?) and at every bake sale. There is a good reason for that. They are heckin’ delicious!

They are also incredibly addicting. Especially this maple-pecan version I made over the weekend. I told myself I could “try” just one to make sure they turned out well, and next thing I knew I had eaten 4. Even my husband, who is notoriously not a sweets person would grab one every time he walked through the kitchen.

Of course, classic Rice Krispie treats are good all by themselves. How can marshmallows and cereal be so good? (Sorry, dumb question. The answer, of course, is sugar.) But, man, these maple pecan Rice Krispie treats are sooooo much better! It’s not just because of the maple syrup and pecan pieces. But there are a few things I like to add or change from the classic recipe to really step up my RKT game.

The first step in making extra delicious Rice Krispie treats? Brown butter (you have heard me rave about brown butter here and here). Since the first step to making RKTs is melting butter, just take a few extra minutes to let it brown a bit. Browning butter is basically the same thing as forgetting you left butter on the stove. Except don’t totally forget about it. At a certain point, it will just become burned butter. And that probably doesn’t taste very good in RKTs.

The next tweak to the classic recipe is to add a flavoring. If I were making basic RKTs, I would add vanilla. Since I made a maple-pecan flavor, I added maple syrup. Adding vanilla or any other flavoring just classes it up a bit. These treats will taste more like they came from a bakery than made from a recipe off of the side of the box.

The last little change is to add a dash of salt to the melted marshmallows. Unless you are using salted butter, then do not add salt! The salt helps balance out the sweetness, and trust me, there is a lot of sweetness.

For my maple-pecan variety, I also added some pecans. To get that nutty flavor throughout the treats, I processed some of the pecans extra fine then poured them into the melted marshmallows. I also left some bigger chunks of pecans and folded them in with the cereal.

At this point in the process, just about all RKT recipes are the same. Dump the coated cereal into a pan and press it down to fill up the dish.

Because these treats can be extra sticky, I prefer to line my casserole dish with some parchment paper. I know parchment can be a bit of a pain to work with since it never wants to stay in place in a dish that shape, but it will make clean up so much easier!

Like all RKTs, the maple pecan Rice Krispie Treats don’t take very long to set. I recommend letting them sit for about 30 minutes before trying to cut them into pieces. If you know you aren’t going to be eating them right away, cover them with plastic wrap so that they don’t dry out too much.

As I mentioned above, these are addictingly good! And they would make an excellent addition to your Thanksgiving dessert line up. Give that pumpkin pie a run for it’s money!

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I look for any excuse to bake. I’ll sign up for any bake sale or office party potluck if it means I can bake something. I often use my Small Group and Book Club as unsuspecting guinea pigs for my new recipes. For instance, my Book Club was the taste testers for these brown butter chocolate chunk cookies. I knew they were a hit when i walked in with 18 cookies and left with none. There were only 6 of us. We each had 3 cookies.

Yes, they were that good! I couldn’t wait to share the recipe on the blog.

Brown butter is a beautiful thing! It’s just melted butter that has slightly….well….browned, which creates this amazingly rich flavor. The butter no longer tastes like butter. It takes on a nutty, toffee-like flavor that perfectly compliments…well…everything.

Brown butter can be used in place of normal butter in lots of different recipes. For these cookies, I mixed in the liquefied butter just like I would a stick of softened butter. My only tip is to wait until it cools just a bit. You don’t want to mix the eggs into hot butter.

Once the eggs vanilla, flour, and other dry ingredients are mixed in, it’s just like your average cookie dough.

95% of the time I would use chocolate chips in my cookies. 5% of the time I don’t have chocolate chips on hand. But it reminds me how great chocolate chunks are in cookies! There are small pieces that just mix right into the dough and the larger pieces that create melted pockets of chocolate all through the cookie.

There are two tips I have learned over the years to make excellent chocolate chip (or chocolate chunk) cookies. The first is to freeze the balls of dough before baking.

To accomplish this, I scoop out my dough on to a small baking sheet and then pop it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.

Once they are frozen, I move them to a bigger sheet and give them a bit more space. Then pop them in the oven.

The second tip is to sprinkle the unbaked cookie dough balls with flakey sea salt. Seriously, if there is one thing you take away from this post its this! Sea salt and any chocolate chip cookie takes it to the next level.

Out of the oven they look fairly unassuming, like ordinary CCCs. But these brown butter chocolate chunk cookies are not ordinary. They are extraordinary! Rhe best part is, people won’t really know why they are different, but they will definitely taste the difference.

The brown butter clearly sets these cookies apart, adding a subtle nutty flavor. Then the large chunks melted chocolate lightly dusted with sea salt just push these cookies over the edge.

Promise me, just make them, give them to your friends, and then sit back and bask in the glory that will inevitably be rained down upon you.

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Maple Pecan Rice Krispie Treats

Brown Butter Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies