Cookies!

I like food. I like cooking and I (obviously) like eating.

I also like many other things — reading, writing, Bigfoot, my kids, church, woobies, singing, etc — but no one has tagged me in a “Your Favorite Bigfoot Hunter” meme lately. (It’s Dr. Jeff Meldrum, for the record.)

My sister Amanda C. Davis has tagged me in a food meme — specifically, a Virtual Cookie Exchange — and since another thing I like is sharing recipes, today is your (well, really, my) lucky day!

I tend to be a bit of a rebel when it comes to cookie exchanges. Now, don’t be misled — I make a mean chocolate chip cookie. I am VERY GOOD at making cookies. It’s one of my Things.* But regular cookies can get boring, and with cookie exchanges you end up with like one million sugar cookies, so I like to introduce an element of different. For this exchange, I’m going to go with Lemon Bar Puppy Chow.

I don’t know that Puppy Chow can really be considered a cookie. It’s not really a candy, either, though. I think it’s in that nebulous area generally defined in my family as “a sweet”. It’s delicious, though, and adding that lemon bar flavor takes it one step beyond “a sweet” to “a really really good sweet.”

And it’s easy, too! Unlike Amanda, who loves to slave over difficult recipes, I believe that ain’t nobody got time for that — or at the very least, I do not have the time for that. Most of my baking has to be done after 8pm, when the littles aren’t running around getting their sticky hands even stickier in my sugar. I can whip out a batch of Lemon Bar Puppy Chow in just a few minutes and have plenty of time for other important matters.**

Thanks to Amanda for the tagging, and for the recipe for our Grammy Davis’s Brer Rabbit Molasses Oatmeal Cookies, which I don’t think I actually had before. (The recipe, not the cookies. I’ve had the cookies.)

Lemon Bar Puppy Chow

• 8 cups Rice Chex cereal (or fake Chex, brand name isn’t important here)
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup lemon curd
• 1/4 cup butter (spreadable margarine works just fine)
• 1 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Melt the white chocolate, lemon curd and butter in a skillet over low heat. Stir A LOT; you don’t want that sucker to start burning up. Next put the Chex into a big huge bowl and pour the delicious melted mixture all over it. Stir it all around to make sure that every nook and cranny is coated up with buttersugar chocolate juice. (That sounds more gross than it really is, sorry.) Pour the powdered sugar over the Chex and stir it all up again to coat it evenly. Pour everything out onto a cookie sheet or large sheet of parchment paper. Let it all cool and store it in an air-tight container. Try not to eat it all at once.

 

 

* I believe everyone has a Thing: something you are good at and could probably do in your sleep. For me my Things are baking chocolate chip cookies, giving impromptu speeches, and, apparently, reciting Kant’s Categorical Imperative.*!

*! Once in college I was suffering from sleep deprivation during one of my political science classes. I was having a hard time staying awake. The professor must have sensed this weakness and took the opportunity to call on me for a recitation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative. More or less asleep in my chair, I gave a textbook definition and promptly went back to staying not quite awake for the rest of the class. My husband can vouch for the veracity of that story.

** Occasionally cleaning or writing, but mostly TV, snacks, and video games. These days we’re enjoying Gotham and Oblivion.