Chocolate Peanut Butter Crispy Treats and Easter Traditions

My family is a little crazy, not in a horrible way, but in a funny silly way. We have recently started a bit of a easter tradition where we have a picnic/bbq at a park with a boat house and then most of our family members get into row boats and canoes and while most people have calm relaxing boat rides down the river we try to splash each other with water using the oars and tip each other over. What generally happens is that most of us end up drenched with water whereas there tends to be one boat/canoe that ends up like this:

When this happened yesterday to 3 of our family members, the rest of us and some strangers looking on from the sides cheered and clapped. So much fun!

Our other easter tradition is an easter egg hunt, where the adults hide the 'children's' chocolate easter eggs' and the 'children' hide the adult's easter eggs. I use quotation marks around the world children because Toby and I belong in that category despite being in our 30s, along with others who are mostly in their 20s. There are certain family members who get more adventurous each year, burying eggs and throwing them so high into trees that you can't reach them and there are always a couple that no-one can find.

This year my mother made a crazy amount of her veggie burgers and I made these chocolate hazelnut crispy treats. I used chocolate peanut butter instead of choc hazelnut butter. These were good, although the marshmallow and chocolate peanut butter flavour was too subtle and there wasn't enough chocolate to fully coat them so I recommend using less rice bubbles/rice krispies, I used the full 6 cups and it was too much. As Allyson suggested it might depend on the rice krispies you use, I used the freedom foods rice puffs. The marshmallows are really great though at helping to keep the mixture together, in the past I've had issues with gluten free rice bubbles/rice krispies and this was far easier.

Chocolate Hazlenut Peanut Butter Crispy Treats from Manifest Vegan

• 4 tbsp vegan margarine
• 1/4 cup chocolate hazelnut butter chocolate peanut butter
  
• 1 tsp vanilla bean scraped, or vanilla bean paste
• 10 oz Dandies vegan marshmallows
• 5 1/2 -6 cups gluten free crispy puffed rice cereal (see note above)
• 1 cup vegan chocolate chips
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• sprinkles or coloured sugar

Instructions

1. Measure out about 5 1/2 cups puffed rice cereal and place into large bowl. (Reserve about half a cup to add at the end in case they seem too “wet”. My marshmallow mixture worked perfectly mixed with 6 cups of rice, but depending on exact ingredients used… such as the hazelnut butter’s consistency, this could vary.
2. Generously grease up a 9″ x 11″ or similar sized pan with margarine (on the bottoms and the sides).
3. Over medium heat in large saucepan melt together margarine and hazelnut butter.
4. Stir in vanilla bean paste and marshmallows.
5. Reduce heat ever so slightly and let marshmallows melt and merge well with the butters, stirring often. All the individual marshmallows and other ingredients should homogenize. It will look more like brownish marshmallow fluff at this point.
6. When all marshmallows have been fused into one giant marshmallow-like blob, quickly stir in with cereal until everything is well mixed. This takes a bit of finesse, but not much. If the mixture seems too sticky or wet, add up to 1/2 cup more rice cereal.
7. Transfer marshmallow/crispy combo into the greased pan and spread out until flat and even.
8. Place in fridge to firm up.
9. Cut into squares, either bite sized or bigger.

I coated a couple with dark chocolate and then drizzled a small amount of chocolate on the rest and sprinkled blue sugar crystals on top. In hindsight, less dark chocolate was probably better for my family who mostly hate dark chocolate.